ill 




im 



w 



■Hi. 

''■"■■': •■■■ HI ' 

mm mm 




IBS 



i 

1 



LETTERS FROM ABROAD 



TO 



KINDRED AT HOME. 



" Well, John, I think we must own that God Almighty had a hand in making 
other countries besides ours<"— The Brothers. 



BY THE AUTHOR OP 

"HOPE LESLIE," "POOR RICH MAN AND THE RICH POOR MAN," 

" LIVE AND LET LIVE," &C, &C. 

1 



IN TWO VOLUMES. 



VOL. I. 



< 
NEW-YORK: 

HARPER & BROTHERS, 82 CtlFF-STREET. 



1841. 

I 0. I i 



x 



N Y\\ 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1841, by 

Harper & Brothers, 

In the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New- York. 










PREFACE. 



An apology for a book implies that the public are 
obliged to read it ; an obligation that would reverse 
the order of nature — transfer the power from the 
strong to the weak. But, unfortunately for them, 
there is a portion of the public who are, in a certain 
sense, obliged to read a book — the kind friends of 
the author — and among these — I say it gratefully, 
not boastfully — I have the happiness to number many 
of my countrymen personally unknown to me. Of 
my friends, then, I ask indulgence for the following 
pages. They are published rather with deference 
to the wishes of others than from any false estimate 
of their worth. Our tour was made under circum- 
stances which forbade any divergence from the high- 
way of all the travelling world, and, consequently, 
we passed over a field so thoroughly reaped that not 
an ear, scarcely a kernel, remains for the gleaner. 
In addition to this, and to painful anxieties and re- 
sponsibilities that accompanied us at every step, we 
were followed by intelligence of deep domestic ca- 
lamity. On this subject I need not enlarge; the 



PREFACE. 



disqualifying influence of these circumstances will 
be comprehended without my opening the sanctuary 
of private griefs. 

I was aware that our stayers-at-home had already 
something too much of churches, statues, and pic- 
tures, and yet that they cannot well imagine how 
much they make up the existence of tourists in the 
Old World. I have sedulously avoided this rock, 
and must trust for any little interest my book may 
possess to the honesty with which I have recorded 
my impressions, and to the fresh aspect of familiar 
things to the eye of a denizen of the New World. 
The fragmentary state in which my letters appear is 
owing to my fear of wearying readers less interested 
than my own family by prolonged details or prosing 
reflections, or disgusting them with the egotism of 
personal experience. 



One word to my English reader, rather of expla- 
nation than apology, which I trust the case does 
not require. I have unscrupulously mentioned the 
name of such distinguished English people as it was 
my good fortune to see. I could have screened my- 
self from reproach by giving merely their initials ; 
but, as they are too well known for this device to 



PREFACE. XI 

afford them any shelter, it seemed to me but a pal- 
try affectation of delicacy. I might plead the au- 
thority of English travellers in the United States; 
but if wrong, no authority justifies it ; and if right, it 
needs none. I have confined my notices strictly to 
public characters — to gallery portraits; for so such 
persons as Mr. Rogers, and even that most refined 
and delicate of gentlewomen, Miss Joanna Baillie, 
may be strictly called, after the full exhibitions in 
Moore's Life of Byron and Lockhart's Life of Scott. 
I have violated no confidence, for none was reposed 
in me. My opportunities of social intercourse were 
few and brief; and I should have omitted these slight 
records of them, but for the wish to transmit to my 
friends at home my delightful impressions of those 
to whom we all owe many happy hours. Perhaps 
my anxiety is superfluous ; the King of Ashantee 
was anxious to know what the English people said 
of him, but I never heard that the English people 
cared to know what the King of Ashantee said of 
them! 



LETTERS, &c. 



PORTSMOUTH. 

George Hotel, Portsmouth, June 4, 1839. 

My dear C, 

Captain S.'s cutter took us off the ship this morn- 
ing at nine o'clock. It was at last a sad parting 
from our messmates, with whom we have been for 
a month separated from all the world, and involved 
in a common destiny; and from the ship, which 
seems like a bit of home, for the feet of the friends 
we have left there have trodden it. 

When I touched English ground I could have 
fallen on my knees and kissed it; but a wharf is 
not quite the locale for such a demonstration, and 
spectators operate like strait-jackets upon enthu- 
siasm, so I contented myself with a mental saluta- 
tion of the home of our fathers, the native land of 
one of our dearest friends, and the birthplace of 
" the bright, the immortal names" that we have 
venerated from our youth upward. 

I forewarn you, my dear C, not to look for any 
statistics from me — any " valuable information." I 
shall try to tell you truly what I see and hear ; to 
" chronicle," as our friend Mr. Dewey says, " while 
they are fresh, my sensations." Everything looks 
novel and foreign to us : the quaint forms of the old, 
sad-coloured houses ; the arched, antique gateways ; 

Vol. I.— B. 



14 PORTSMOUTH. 

the royal busts niched in an old wall ; the very dark 
colouring of the foliage, and the mossy stems of the 
trees. We seem to have passed from the fresh, bright 
youth to the old age of the world. The form and col- 
ouring of the people are different from those of ours. 
They are stouter, more erect, and more sanguine. 

Our friends Dr. M. and his wife have decided to 
remain with us while we stay here, so we make 
eight in all; and as we stand in the bow-window 
of the George, staring, wondering, exclaiming, and 
laughing, we must make a group of " homespuns just 
come up to town" worthy Cruikshank's pencil. 
And, by-the-way, the passing equipages appear to 
us the originals of Cruikshank's illustrations, and the 
parties driving in them fac-similes of Pickwick (the 
modern Don Quixote) and his club. 

Basil Hall is living here. We have had some 
discussion whether we should recall ourselves to his 
memory by sending to him Mr. A.'s letter and our 
cards. W r e have no individual claims on him, and, 
as Americans, there is no love lost between us. 
R. cited Scott's opinion that it is uncivil to both 
parties not to deliver promptly a letter of introduc- 
tion ; so, submitting to such sound authority, Dr. M. 
has gone off to leave ours at Captain Hall's door, 
and then he will leave his card at ours, and there 
the matter will end. 

We have been walking over the town, over the 
ramparts, and through some fine gravelled avenues 
shaded with elms. Don't fancy our elms, with their 
drooping, embowering branches — no, nothing so 



PORTSMOUTH. 15 

beautiful — but what we call the English elm, with 
its upright, stiff stem. As we straggled on down 
a green lane, we saw a notice " To let fur- 
nished" on the gate of a very attractive-looking 
cottage; so, being seized with a happy inspiration 
(a natural one, you may think it, for pushing Yan- 
kees), we determined, as applicants for the tene- 
ment, to see the inside' of an English cottage; so, 
going up a narrow paved walk, we rung for admit- 
tance. I asked a pretty, neatly-dressed woman who 
appeared to show me the premises, and kept my 
countenance in spite of my tittering followers, while 
we were shown through a dining-room, drawing- 
room, two kitchens, and five bedrooms, all small, and 
furnished with extreme neatness and comfort. All 
this, with a very pretty little garden, we might have, 
without linen or plate, for four guineas a week.- 
There was a lovely little court, too, in front, filled 
with shrubs and flowers ; not a thimbleful of earth 
that did not do its duty. No wonder the woman 
took us at our word, for I am sure we looked as if 
we would fain set up our rest there. 

I afterward followed R. into the garden, and en- 
countered the deaf husband of our neat matron-guide. 
He showed me a filbert grafted upon an apple-tree 
by a bird having deposited a seed there. I asked, 
" Had the filbert borne fruit V " Four guineas a 
week, ma'am," he answered, " and it's counted a 
very 'ealthy hair!" We felt it was quite time to 
retreat. 

When we came home we found that Captain 



16 PORTSMOUTH. 

Hall, Mrs. H., and some of their friends had left 
;> cards for us. " Very prompt," we thought ; " and 
so this matter is done." 

We ate with Dalgetty appetites our first English 
dinner : soup, salmon, mutton-chops, and everything 
the best of its kind, and served as in a private gen- 
tleman's house, and, alas ! with an elegance and ac- 
curacy found in few gentlemen's houses in our coun- 
try. We have plenty of gentlemen, but gentlemen's 
servants are with us rare birds. 

June 5. We feel green and bewildered, as you 
may imagine ; and not knowing how to arrange our 
tour around the Isle of Wight, we were discussing it 
in some perplexity when Captain Hall and Mrs. H. 
were announced. They were just going off on a 
visit to the son of Wilberforce who is rector at 
Brixton; but Captain H. deciding at once that 
we must give the day to the Portsmouth lions, 
and that he would show them to us, deferred his 
departure till the evening ; and the half hour before 
we set off was occupied in receiving a visit from 
Captain H.'s children and instructions from a friend 
of Mrs. Hall, well acquainted with the localities, as 
to our progress around the island. Captain H. left 
us no time for dawdling. He has been a lion- 
hunter, and understands the art of lion-showing, 
and, what I think rather the nicest part of the art, 
what not to show. Off we set towards the sally- 
port. On the way we dropped into a Gothic church 
(a pretty episode enough) of the twelfth century. 
Captain H. pointed out a monument to Bucking- 



THE VICTORY. 17 

ham, Charles the First's favourite who, as you may- 
remember, was killed by Felton at Portsmouth. 

We were to go first to the Victory, which is now 
Kept here, " a kind of toy," as one of our seamen 
of the St. James said, but which, in fact, is some- 
thing more than that — a receiving and drilling ship. 
We found a boat awaiting us, put (of course by Cap- 
tain Hall's intervention) at our disposal by the com- 
mander of the Victory. It was manned with a dozen 
youngsters in the Victory's uniform, a white knit 
woollen blouse, with the word Victory in Maria-Lou- 
ise-blue on the breast. They were stout, ruddy lads. 
The Victory, you know, is the ship in which Nelson 
won the battle of Trafalgar, and died in winning it. 
Captain H. led us to the quarter-deck, and showed 
us a brass plate inserted in the floor, inscribed with 
these words, " Here Nelson fell /" This was a 
thrilling sight to those of us who remembered when 
Nelson was held as the type of all gallantry, fight- 
ing for liberty against the world. R. was obliged 
to turn away till he could command his emotions, 
and I thought of the time when we were all chil- 
dren together at home, and I saw him running 
breathless up the lane, tossing his hat into the air 
and shouting, " Nelson ! Victory !" Truly, " the 
child is father to the man." We were received 
very courteously by the commander, Captain S., 
who invited us into an apartment which, save the 
ceiling was a little lower, had the aspect of a shore 
drawing-room ; there were sofas, show-books, flow- 
ers, piano, and a prettier garniture than these, a 

B2 



18 THE VICTORY. 

young bride, reminding us, with her pale, delicate 
face and French millinery, of our fair young coun- 
trywomen — quite un-English. The Victory is Cap- 
tain S.'s home, and the lady was his daughter. 

We then went into the cockpit and groped our 
way to the dark, narrow state-room (a midshipman's) 
where Nelson was carried after he was shot down. 
Captain H. pointed to the beam where his head lay 
when he died. There a heroic spirit had passed 
away, and left a halo in this dark, dismal place. 
Place and circumstance are never less important 
to a man than when he is dying, and yet it was a 
striking contrast (and the world is full of such), 
the man dying in this wretched, dark, stifling hole, 
when his name was resounding through all the pal- 
aces of Europe, and making our young hearts leap 
in the New World. Shall I tell you what remem- 
brance touched me mo§t as I stood there ? not his 
gallant deeds, for they are written in blood, and 
many a vulgar spirit has achieved such ; but the ex- 
quisite tenderness gleaming forth in his last words, 
" Kiss me, Hardy !" These touched the chord of 
universal humanity. 

Our next step was from the poetic-romantic to the 
actual, from the Victory to the biscuit-bakery, a place 
where biscuits are made for naval stores by steam. 
A police-man started out upon us " like a spider," as 
Captain H. very descriptively said, and announced 
that all ingress to the art and mystery of steam-ba- 
king was forbidden to foreigners ; and we were turn- 
ing away acquiescingly, for the most curious of our 



THE VICTORY. 19 

party had two or three years ago seen the process 
in full blast in one of our Western States, but Cap- 
tain Hall would not be so easily baffled. He was 
vexed that an old rule, fallen into general discredit, 
should be applied to a biscuit-bakery and " such 
branches of learning ;" so he went to find the admi- 
ral, but he was not at his quarters ; and no dispensa- 
tion being to be had, he declared the biscuits " all 
sour." Very sweet we thought them the next morn- 
ing when we received an amende most honourable, 
in the shape of a note from Admiral Fleming, " re- 
gretting the disappointment Miss S. met with at the 
bakehouse, of which Captain Hall had informed him" 
(I can imagine in what animated terms) " and which 
he would have prevented had he known her wishes," 
and concluding with saying, that, having heard from 
Captain Hall of our intention of visiting the Isle of 
Wight, he had the pleasure of offering his yacht for 
our conveyance. Now this was surely the true spirit 
of courtesy ; and when this spirit is infused into in- 
ternational manners we may be called Christian na- 
tions, and not till then. 

Well, the bakery being taboo, our conductor pro- 
posed we should next row off to the royal yacht by 
way of parenthesis in the day's doings. This yacht 
was built for George IV., and the fitting up, even to 
the pattern of the chintz, designed by his majesty : 
truly a fitting occupation for the monarch of the 
greatest nation in the world ! He had the ambition, 
I have known shared with him by some exquisite 
fine ladies, who cast away their gowns and burn their 



20 THE ROYAL YACHT. 

caps if they be imitated. The manufacturer gave 
a required pledge that the chintz of the royal yacht 
should never be copied. M. suggested it was not 
pretty enough, to make this a sacrifice on the part of 
the manufacturers. The yacht, however, is a bijou, 
the prettiest thing, I fancy, that has floated since Cle- 
opatra's barge. The beds are wide and sumptu- 
ous, there are luxurious chairs and sofas, gilt pannel- 
ings, lamps with cable-chains and anchor-shaped or- 
naments, and a kitchen-range fit to serve an Apicius. 
There is a pretty library too, but I suspect his ma- 
jesty's proportion of mental and corporeal provision 
was much after FalstafF's fashion. R. remarked its 
incompleteness, and said to Captain H., " Our libra- 
ry in the St. James is superior to this ; it has your 
books." 

If I could refresh you with the bottle of Madeira 
and plate of biscuits which Captain Hall contrived 
to conjure into the block manufactory, while a very 
clear-headed man was explaining to us its capital 
machinery, I might venture to drag you along with 
us through the rolling-mill and the Cyclops regions 
where the anchors are forged ; but here I let you off 
for this busity pleasant day, at the moment of our 
parting with Captain Hall, and the interchange of 
hearty wishes that we might meet again in the Isle 
of Wight. What a host of prejudices and false 
judgments had one day's frank and kind intercourse 
dispersed to the winds — forever ! 



THE ISLE OF WIGHT. 21 



ISLE OF WIGHT. 

Isle of Wight, June 6. 

Our transit from Portsmouth in the admiral's yacht 
was delightful. At the little town of Ryde we en- 
gaged two vehicles called flies, small covered car- 
riages, each holding comfortably three persons, with 
two " intilligent lads" (as the proprietor of the equi- 
pages assured us) for drivers. Francois has a seat 
on the box, and we have sent our luggage to Lon- 
don, so that we are as unencumbered as if we were 
out for an afternoon's drive. 

And here I am tempted to throw away my pen. 
It is in vain to attempt to convey to you our im- 
pressions of this lovely island, or to retain them my- 
self by this poor record. Call it Eden ; call it par- 
adise ; and, after all, what conceptions have we of 
those Terras Incognitas ? The Isle of Wight, they 
tell us, is a miniature of England. It has the ex- 
quisite delicacy and perfection of a miniature by a 
master hand. I am resolved to be as virtuously ab- 
stemious as possible on the subject of scenery ; but 
you must be patient, and bethink yourself, my dear 
C, that it is not possible to be silent on what makes 
up so large a portion of a traveller's existence and 
happiness. When we had ascended the hill from 
Ryde and turned off into a green lane, we might 
have been mistaken for maniacs escaped from Bed- 
lam, or rather, I think, for children going home for 
a holyday. We were thrusting our heads out of 
our little carriages, shouting from one to the other, 



22 THE ISLE OF WIGHT. 

and clapping our hands. And why these clamorous 
demonstrations ? We had just escaped from ship- 
board, remember; were on the solid green earth, 
driving through narrow winding avenues, with slo- 
ping hills and lofty trees on each side of us, often 
interlacing over our heads (the trees, I mean!), every 
inch of ground cultivated and divided by dark 
hedges filled with flowering shrubs, and sprinkled 
with thatched and mossy cottages — such as we have 
only seen in pictures — and the Solent Sea sparkling 
in the distance. 

Our first halt was at Brading Church. Blessed 
are those who make the scene of their labours fit 
shrines for the homage of the traveller's heart. So 
did Leigh Richmond. A troop of children (twelve 
we counted) ran out to open the gate of the church- 
yard for us. One pointed out the "young cot- 
tager's" grave; another was eager to prove she 
could repeat glibly the epitaphs " little Jane" had 
recited. They showed us Brading Church (built 
in the seventh century) and Richmond's house, and 
the trees under which he taught. We gathered 
some holly leaves from the tree that shades his 
courtyard, which we shall devoutly preserve to 
show you. We might have remained there till this 
time if our curiosity had equalled the resources of 
our " train attendant." It is quite a new sight to us 
to see children getting their living in this way. We 
have little to show, and the traveller must grope his 
way as well as he can to that little. These children 
with us would have been at school or at the plough, 



THE ISLE OF WIGHT. 23 

looking to a college education in their perspective, 
or a ''farm in the West:" something better than a 
few chance pennies from a traveller. But though 
there are few prizes for them in the lottery of life 
here, I was glad to see them looking comfortably 
clad, well fed, and healthy. 

We diverged at the beautiful village of Shanklin, 
and walked to Shanklin Chine,* a curious fissure, 
w T orn, I believe, in the hills by a rivulet. The 
place is as wild as our ice-glen ; and the rocks, in- 
stead of being overgrown with palmy ferns, maid- 
en's hair, and lichens, like ours, are fringed with 
sweet pease, wallflowers, stocks, hyacinths, and all 
growing at their own sweet will ; this betokens an 
old neighbourhood of civilization. 

A woman came forth from a cottage to unlock a 
gate through which we must pass to go up the 
Chine. K. says the beauties of Nature are as jeal- 
ously locked up here as the beauties of a harem. It 
is the old truth, necessity teaches economy ; what- 
ever can be made a source of revenue is so made, 
and the old women and children are tax-gatherers. 
At every step some new object or usage starts up be- 
fore us ; and it strikes us the more because the peo- 
ple are speaking our own language, and are essen- 
tially like our own. 

In the narrowest part of our pathway, where the 
rill had become a mere thread, we had the pleasure 
of encountering the Halls. They were walking to 
Bon Church. We asked leave to join them. You 

* Chine is a Hampshire word for a cleft in the rocks. 



24 VENTNOR. 

may fancy what a delightful stroll we had with this 
very pleasant meeting, and such accidental accesso- 
ries to the lovely scenery as a ship in the distance, 
a rainbow dropping into the sea, and the notes of a 
cuckoo, the first I had ever heard. History, paint- 
ing, poetry, are at every moment becoming real, ac- 
tual. 

Bon Church, at a short distance from the road, 
secluded from it by an interposing elevation, en- 
closed by a stone wall, and surrounded by fine 
old trees, their bark coated with moss, is, to a 
New-World eye, a picture " come to life." " Six- 
teen hundred and sixteen," said I to L., decipher- 
ing a date on a monument; "four years before 
there were any white inhabitants in Massachusetts." 
" Then," she replied, " this is an Indian's grave." 
Her eyes were bent on the ground. She was in her 
own land ; she looked up and saw the old arched 
and ivied gateway, and smiled — the illusion had 
vanished. 



VENTNOR. 

We have passed a 'pleasant rainy day at Ventnor. 
The Halls are here too, and we make frequent use of 
the piazza by which our parlours communicate ; so 
our friendship ripens apace. We went, in spite of 
mist and rains, to pay another visit to Bon Church, 
to " get it by heart," Captain H. says ; " into our 
hearts we certainly have got it, and taken a drench- 
ing into the bargain." But this was a cheap price 



VENTNOR. 25 

to pay for the view we had, when, just at the sum- 
mit of the hill, the mist rolled off like the furling of 
a sail, and we saw the village of Shanklin (the gem !), 
with its ivied walls, its roses, its everything that flow- 
ers, broad fields of corn, and the steep cliffs down to 
Shanklin Chine. Shall I ever forget the little in and 
out cottages jutted against the rocks, the narrow 
lanes that afford you glimpses, through green and 
flowery walls, of these picture-dwellings 1 

As we strolled down the road from Bon Church 
I stopped at a cottage inhabited by very poor peo- 
ple. There were four distinct homes under one roof, 
and an enclosed strip of ground in front, four feet 
wide. This space was full of verbenas, stocks, roses, 
and geraniums ; and an old crone between eighty and 
ninety was tending them. I thought of the scrawny 
lilacs and woody rosebushes in some of our court- 
yards, and blushed, or, rather, I shall blush if ever I 
see an English eye upon them ; for (shame to us !) it 
is the detection, and not the sin, that calls up the 
blush. 



Our first stop after leaving Ventnor was at St. 
Lawrence's Church, the smallest in England ; you 
shall have its dimensions from some poetry we 
bought of the beadle, his own manufacture. 

" This church has often drawn the curious eye 
To see its length and breadth— to see how high. 
At length to measure it was my intent, 
That I might verify its full extent. 

Vol. I.— C 



26 VENTNOIt. 

Its breadth from side to side above the bench 

Is just eleven feet and half an inch. 

The height, from pavement to the ceiling mortar, 

Eleven feet, five inches and a quarter. 

And its length, from east to the west end, 

Twenty-five feet four inches, quarters three, 

Is just its measurement, as yo'u may see." 

The poet-beadle's brains, you may think, were 
graduated by the same scale as St. Lawrence's 
Church. However, I assure you he was quite the 
beau-ideal of an old beadle, and he did his ciceroni 
work well, showing us where his lordship sat (Lord 
Yarborough, in whose gift is the rectorship), and 
where sat the butler, and my lady's maid, and the 
parish officers. All these privileged people, who 
dwell in the atmosphere of nobility, had, to the old 
beadle's senses, something sweeter than the odour of 
sanctity. For the rest of St. Lawrence's audience, 
I fear they do not fare as well as the people in Doc- 
tor Franklin's dream, who, upon confessing to St. 
Peter at the gate of Heaven that they were neither 
Baptists nor Methodists, nor of any particular sect, 
were bidden come in and take the best seats they 
could find ! 

Among the epitaphs I read on the mouldering 
stones in St. Lawrence's churchyard, was one that 
pleased me for its quaint old ballad style. It was a 
husband's on his wife, beginning 

" Meek and gentle was her spirit, 
Prudence did her life adorn, 
Modest, she disclaimed all merit, 
Tell me, am not I forlorn V* 



BRIXTON. 27 

I would not like to make too nice an inquisition 
as to how long he remained so !* 



We went down to the beach for a good view of 
Black Gang Chine, a wild, grand-looking place, 
with masses of sandstone of different strata, various- 
ly coloured, and rising to an elevation of some three 
hundred feet above the sea. Here Captain Hall, 
with his happy young people, again joined us, to 
part again immediately ; they to walk to Chale, and 
we to rejoin R. at the inn, where, for walking into 
the house and out of it, we paid a fee to a waiter 
of an aged and venerable aspect, accurately dressed 
in a full suit of black, and looking much like one 
of our ancient Puritan divines setting oif for an " as- 
sociation." 

As we approached Brixton, the girls and myself 
alighted to walk, that we might see this enchanting 
country more at leisure. I cannot give you an idea 
of the deliciousness of a walk here between the 
lovely hedges all fragrance, the air filled with the 
melody of birds, and the booming of the ocean 

* The following epitaph amused me : so like our own Puritan 
elegiac poetry. 

" To the Memory of Charles Dixon, Smith and Farrier. 

" My sledge and hammer lie reclined, 
My bellows too have lost their wind, 
My fire's extinct, my forge decay'd, 
My vice all in the dust is laid ; 
My coal is spent, my iron gone, 
My last nail's driven— my work is done !" 



28 BRIXTON. 

waves for a bass. For one sweet singing-bird with 
us, I think there are twenty here ; and, included in 
this twenty, the nightingale, the blackbird, the lark, 
and the cuckoo ! The note of the English black- 
bird is electrifying, but yet I have heard none 
sweeter than our woodthrush, that little hermit of 
our solitudes. You would forgive me, dear C, for 
observing some contrasts that may perchance strike 
you as unpatriotic, if, 

" Borne, like Loretto's chapel, through the air," 

I could send over to you one of these picturesque 
cottages (any one of them), draped with ivy to the 
very top of the chimneys, and set it down beside 
our unsightly farmhouses. 

At Brixton we again met Captain Hall. He had 
had the disappointment of finding that his friend, 
Mr. Wilberforce, was absent ; and intent on filling 
for us every little vacant niche with some pleasure, 
he had asked leave to show us a picture of the fa- 
ther in the son's library. H., in the effectiveness of 
his kindness, reminds me of L. M., and seems to me 
what our Shaker friends would call the " male man- 
ifestation" of her ever-watchful and all-accomplish- 
ing spirit. 

We met two of the young Wilberforces, and 
begged the pleasure of shaking hands with them 
for their grandfather's sake. The boy bears a strong 
resemblance to him, and is, I hope, like his grand- 
father, sent into the world on an errand of mercy. 
Such a face is the superscription, by the finger of 
God, of a soul of benevolence. 



BRIXTON. 29 

The widow of Wilberforce was sitting in the li- 
brary. She received us courteously. She has a dig- 
nified demeanour, and a very sweet countenance, on 
which I fancied I could see the record of a happy 
life and many a good deed done. If living in a 
healthy air produces the signs of health, why should 
not living one's whole life in an atmosphere of be- 
nevolence, bring out into the expression the tokens 
of a healthy soul ? 

We walked over the grounds of the rectory. 
Have you a very definite idea of an English lawn 1 
The grass is shaven every week ; this, of course, pro- 
duces a fresh bright tint, and to your tread it feels 
like the richest bed of moss you ever set your foot 
upon. I fear we never can have the abundance and 
variety of flowers they have here. 1 see continually, 
plants which remain in the open ground all winter, 
that we are obliged to house by the first of October. 
There was a myrtle reaching the second-story win- 
dows of Mr. Wilberforce's house. 



In my strolls I avail myself of every opportunity 
of accosting the people, and when I can find any 
pretext I go into the cottages by the wayside. 
This, I suppose, is very un-English, and may seem 
to some persons very impertinent. But I have nev- 
er found inquiries, softened with a certain tone of 
sympathy, repulsed. Your inferiors in condition are 
much like children, and they, you know, like dogs, 
are proverbially said to know who loves them. I 

C2 



30 BRIXTON. 

stopped at a little cottage this morning, half smoth- 
ered with roses, geraniums, &c, and, on the pretext 
of looking at a baby, made good my entrance. The 
little bit of an apartment, not more than six feet by 
ten, was as neat as possible. Not an article of its 
scanty furniture looked as if it had been bought by 
this generation ; everything appeared cared for, and 
well preserved; so unlike corresponding dwellings 
with us. The woman had nine children; six at 
home, and all tidily dressed. I have not seen in 
England a slovenly-looking person. Even the three 
or four beggars w T ho stealthily asked charity of us 
at Portsmouth were neatly dressed. 

I greeted, en passant, a woman sitting at her cot- 
tage window. She told me she paid for half of a 
little tenement and a bit of a garden, ten pounds 
(fifty dollars) rent. And when I congratulated her 
on the pleasant country, " Ah," she said, " we can't 
live on a pleasant country !" I have not addressed 
one of these people who has not complained of pov- 
erty, said something of the difficulty of getting work, 
of the struggling for bread, which is the condition 
of existence among the lower classes here. Strange 
sounds these to our ears ! 

I was amused to-day with something that marked 
the diversity of the condition from ours in another 
way. I accosted a little girl who stood at a cottage- 
gate. She was as well dressed as S.'s girls, or any 
of our well-to-do-in-the- world people. Among other 
impertinent questions I asked "Who lives here 1 ?" 
" Mrs. So-and-so and Mrs. So-and-so." " Only two 



BRIXTON. 31 

ladies /" I exclaimed, conforming my phrase to the 
taste of our cottage- dames. " They ben't ladies," 
she replied. " Indeed ! what are they V 9 " They 
be's womans." Would such a disclaimer have been 
put in from one end of the United States to the 
other, unless in the shanty of adopted citizens 1 

I will spare you all the particulars of my wayside 
acquaintance with a sturdy little woman whom I 
met coming out of a farmyard, staggering under a 
load of dry furze, as much as could be piled on a 
wheelbarrow. A boy not more than five years old 
was awaiting her at the gate, with a compact little 
parcel in his arms snugly done up. " Now take 
she" he said, extending it to the mother, and I found 
the parcel was a baby not a month old ; so I offered 
to carry it, and did for a quarter of a mile, while 
the mother, in return, told me the whole story of her 
courtship, marriage, and maternity, with the last in- 
cident in her domestic annals, the acquisition of a 
baking of meal, some barm, and the loan of her hus- 
band's mother's oven, and, lastly, of the gift of the 
furze to heat the oven. The woman seemed some- 
thing more than contented — happy. I could not 
but congratulate her. " It does not signify," I said, 
" being poor when one is so healthy and so merry as 
you appear." " Ah, that's natural to me," she re- 
plied ; " my mother had red cheeks in her coffin !" 
Happy are those who have that " natural to them," 
that princes, and fine ladies, and half the world are 
sighing for and running after. 



32 FRESH-WATER BAY. 

The last part of our drive to Fresh-water Bay was 
through a highly-cultivated district ; the country had 
lost its romantic charm ; to the very seashore on both 
sides of us it was covered with barley, pease, and the 
finest of wheat. Save a glimpse of the sea in the 
distance, the bold headland of Black Gang Chine, 
and the downs before us, it was as tame as a cosset 
lamb. And, by-the-way, speaking of lambs and 
such fancy articles, immense flocks of sheep are gra- 
zing on these downs, and each is as big as three of 
our Merinos, and the mutton is delicious. 



F R E S H-W A T E R BAY. 

We are at an inn within a few yards of the beach, 
with a shore of chalky cliffs, and a pretty arch in the 
rocks worn by the water, and a jutting point before 
us called the Stag, from a fanciful resemblance, as 
I conjecture, to that animal boldly leaping into the 
waves. The Halls are here, and in a stroll with 
them last evening over the cliffs we encountered a 
man who lives, " not by gathering samphire" .(which, 
by-the-way, we did gather), but by getting the 
eggs of seafowl that resort here in immense flocks, 
flattering themselves, no doubt, in their bliss of ig- 
norance, that the cliffs are inaccessible.* Our egg- 

* They are of very difficult access, as we were assured by seeing 
the process of letting the man down and sustaining him, on the per- 
pendicular cliff; but nothing seems impossible to men who must die 
or struggle for their bread. The man was stout and very well look- 
ing, but with an anxious and sad expression. I found he had a large 



FRESH-WATER BAY. 33 

hunter had been successful, and had a sack of eggs 
hanging before him. He pays two guineas a year 
to the lord of the manor for the privilege of getting 
them, and sells them, he says, " to people in a de- 
cline." One lady, he told us, had paid him a shil- 
ling apiece. " She," replied Captain H., with a 
lurking smile, " must have been far gone in a de- 
cline, I think." The man told us they had the art of 
emptying the eggshell by perforating it with two 
pinholes, and blowing out the contents ; whereupon 
the captain, who leaves nothing unessayed, amid his 
children's merry shouts and ours, fairly rivalled the 
professor at his own art. 



Sunday. — We have been to church for the first 
time in England. It was an old Gothic edifice. I 
thought of our forefathers with tenderness and with 
reverence. Brave men they were to leave these 
venerable sanctuaries, to go over the ocean — to " the 
depth of the desert's gloom." 

It was a curious coincidence enough, that the first 
preacher we hear this side the water bears our own 
name. This it was, no doubt, that set my mind to 
running upon relationships and forefathers. Mr. S. 
is a poor curate, who, after twenty years' service, is 
compelled to leave his place here by the new order 
of things, which obliges his superior to do his own 

family to feed, and among them four stalwart boys. I asked him 
what were their prospects. " None," he said, with an expression 
suited to the words, " but starvation." 



34 CARISBROOKE CASTLE. 

work. One feels a little distrustful of those reforms 
that destroy individual happiness and snap asunder 
old ties. 



Monday. — 'We drove this morning to Carisbrooke 
Castle, an old ruin in the heart of the island. We 
were shown the window through which Charles I., 
when imprisoned here, attempted to escape. In 
spite of getting my first historical impressions from 
Hume, that lover of kings and supreme lover of the 
Stuarts, I never had much sympathy with this king 
of bad faith ; still it is not easy to stand at this win- 
dow without a sorrowful sympathy with Charles. 
There he stood, looking on the land that seemed to 
him his inheritance by a Divine charter, longing for 
the wings of the birds that were singing round this 
window, to bear him to those friends who were 
awaiting him, and, instead of him, had only the sig- 
nal which he hung out of this window to give them 
notice of the defeat of his project. 

Nothing, I know, is more tiresome than the de- 
scription of old castles which you get from such 
raw tourists as we are, and may find in every guide- 
book ; but I wish I could do up my sensations and 
send them to you. As we passed the Elizabethan 
gate, and wound away up into the old keep, stop- 
ping, now and then, to look through the openings 
left for the exercise of the cross-bow, or as we wan- 
dered about the walls, and stood to hear the peb- 



SOUTHAMPTON. 35 

ble descend into Carisbrooke well,* I felt as if old 
legends had become incorporate. 



We expect nothing pleasanter than the week we 
have spent on the Isle of Wight. How much of 
our enthusiasm it may owe to our coming to it from 
shipboard, and to the fresh impressions of the Old 
World, of its thatched cottages, ivied walls, old 
churches and churchyards, and English cultivation, 
I cannot say. The English speak of it as all "in 
little" a cockney affair, &c. ; but, if small, it has 
the delicacy and perfection of a cabinet picture. 



SOUTHAMPTON. 

My dear C, 

Thursday, 13th. The luxury of an English inn, 
after a day exhausting as our last on the Isle of 
Wight, has never been exaggerated and cannot be 
overpraised. We have not been ten days in Eng- 
land, without having certain painful comparisons be- 
tween our own inns and those of this country, forced 
upon us. But I intend, after I have had more ex- 
perience, to give you my observations on this subject 
in one plentiful shower, instead of annoying you 
with sprinkling them over all my letters. 

Our intention was to have proceeded directly to 
London. Instead of this we have loitered here two 
days, and why, I will tell you. 

* The well is 200 feet in depth, 25 of masonry, and the rest cut 
through a solid rock. 



36 SOUTHAMPTON. 

Captain HalPs good taste was shocked at our 
leaving Southampton without seeing Netley Abbey ; 
and surely to leave this out, in seeing England, 
would be much like the omission of the Midsum- 
mer's Night's Dream in reading Shakspeare. So 
yesterday morning, with a sky as clear, and almost 
as deep as our own summer-sky, we set off, accom- 
panied by the Halls, for these beautiful ruins. They 
are much more entire than those of Carisbrooke. 
The walls are standing, and how long they have 
been so is touchingly impressed upon you by the 
tall trees that have grown up in the unroofed apart- 
ments. Shrubs four or five feet high fringe the 
tops of the walls, and flowers are rooted in the crev- 
ices. It seemed as if Nature, with a feeling of kin- 
dred for a beautiful work of art, would fain hide the 
wounds she could not heal — wounds of violence as 
well as time. 

I shall spare you any description, for I should 
waste your time and mine. No description can con- 
vey as definite an idea as any of the hundred en- 
gravings you have seen of Netley Abbey ; and I am 
sorry to say to you, that even a Daguerreotype pic- 
ture would give you no adequate impression of its 
beauty. There is nothing for you but to come and 
see these places ; their soul, their history, their asso- 
ciations are untransfuseable. I have no extraordina- 
ry sensibility to such things, and I saw smiling at 

my tears ; and glad I should have been to have pass- 
ed a day alone there, to have trodden the ground 
with undisturbed recollections of those who reared 



SOUTHAMPTON. 37 

the beautiful temple, who were, in their time, the 
teachers of religion, the preservers of learning, the 
fountains of charity. It would not be easy to in- 
dulge this fancy, for, besides the guides that infested 
us, and a succession of hunters after the picturesque, 
R. detected some fellows stealing jackdaws' nests ; 
and Captain H. not only threatened them with the 
strong arm of the law, but, to secure these holy pre- 
cincts from such marauders, he was at the pains to 
lodge information against them with the proper au- 
thority. 

On our return from Netley we ascertained that the 

family are at their place, a short drive from 

Southampton. You know how much reason we 
have to wish to avail ourselves of our letters to 
them, or, rather, you do not know how much, nor 
did we till we had seen them. So we sent off our 
letters, and w r ent to Winchester with the Halls 
by the railroad. It was but the second day since 
this section of the road was opened, and it was 
lined with staring people, hurraing and clapping 
hands. The chief object of the excursion to us 
w T as the Cathedral, which is the largest in England. 
A part of it is of the Saxon order, and dates from 
the seventh century. What think you of our New- 
World eyes seeing the sarcophagi containing the 
bones of the old Saxon kings ? the Ethelreds and 
Ethelwolfs, and of Canute the Dane ; the tombs 
of William Rufus, and of William of Wickham ; 
the chair in which bloody Mary sat at her nuptial 
ceremony, besides unnumbered monuments and chap- 

Vol. I.— D 



38 SOUTHAMPTON. 

els built by kings and bishops, to say nothing of 
some of the best art of our own time; sculpture by 
Flaxman and Chantrey. Their details were lost upon 
us in the effect of the great whole ; the long-drawn 
aisles, the windows with their exquisite colouring, 
the lofty vault, the carved stones, the pillars and 
arches — those beautiful Gothic arches. We had 
some compensation for the unconsciousness of a life- 
time, of the power of architecture, in our overwhelm- 
ing emotions. They cannot be repeated. We can- 
not see a cathedral twice for the first time, that is 
very clear ! 

I was not prepared for the sensations to be excited 
by visiting these old places of the Old World. 
There is nothing in our land to aid the imperfect 
lights of history. Here it seems suddenly verified. 
Its long-buried dead, or, rather, its dim spectres, ap- 
pear with all the freshness of actual life. A miracle 
is wrought on poetry and painting. While they 
represented what we had never seen, they were but 
shadows to us ; a kind of magic mirrors, showing 
false images ; now they seem a Divine form, for the 
perpetual preservation of the beautiful creations of 
Nature and art. 

It happened that while we were in Winchester 
Cathedral service was performed there. I cannot 
tell how I might have been affected if it had been 
a more hearty service. There were the officials, the 
clergyman and clerk, a choir of boys, and, for the 
audience, half a dozen men, three or four women, 
octogenarians, or verging on the extreme of human 



SOUTHAMPTON. 39 

life, and ourselves. I confess that the temple, and 
not He who sanctifies it, filled my mind. My eyes 
were wandering over the arches, the carvings, the 
Saxon caskets, &c, &c* 



When we arrived at the depot at Southampton 

we found Mrs. , with her daughter, awaiting us 

with a welcome that made us forget we were stran- 
gers to them and strangers in a strange land — bless- 
ed forgetfulness ! They transferred K. and myself 
to their carriage, and we drove home with them to 

B Lodge ; and, as the days here are eked out 

with a generous twilight till nearly ten o'clock, we 
had time to see their beautiful place, and to-day the 
pleasure has been repeated. 

I cannot follow the rule I would fain have adopt- 
ed, and compare what I see here to what is familiar 
to you at home. There is, for instance, in this place 
of Mrs. , a neatness, completeness, and perfec- 
tion, of which we have but the beginning and faint 
shadowing. Our grounds are like our society, where 
you meet every degree of civilization. Here, every 
tree, shrub, and little flower is in its right place, and 
nothing present that should not be here. On one 
side of the house the garden is laid out in the fantas- 
tical French style, in the form of hearts and whim- 
sical figures, but elsewhere it is completely English, 

* The prudence of not attempting a description of Winchester 
Cathedral, or an enumeration of its treasures, will be appreciated by 
those who know that a volume of 200 pages is devoted to this sub- 
ject alone. 



40 SOUTHAMPTON. 

with noble trees, that grow as Nature bids them ; 
hothouses, with grapes and pines ; and a lawn that 
for hundreds of years, probably, has had its grass 
cropped every week through the growing months. 

The house is, I fancy, rather a favourable speci- 
men of the residences of the English gentry, spa- 
cious, and arranged with comfort and elegance; 
but not surpassing, in these respects, the first class 
of gentlemen's country-houses in America. But 
there are luxuries here that we have not, and shall 
not have for many a day. The walls are paint- 
ed by the master of the house with views on the 
Rhine, from sketches of his own, and very beau- 
tiful they are. This is, to be sure, attainable to us ; 
for a taste, and a certain facility in painting, is 
common enough among us ; but when shall we 
see on our walls an unquestionable Titian, or a 
Carlo Dolce, or when, in a gentleman's country- 
house, an apartment filled with casts from the best 
antiques ? Certainly not till our people cease to de- 
mand drapery for the chanting cherubs, and such 
like innocents ! 

Mrs. was a friend of Mrs. Siddons. She 

has a full-length picture of her by Lawrence, which 
represents a perfect woman in the maturity of her 
powers and charms, somewhat idealized, perhaps, as 
if the painter were infected by Mrs. 's enthusi- 
asm, and to the fondness of a friend added the de- 
votion of a worshipper. It is Mrs. Siddons ; not a 
muse, queen, or goddess, though fit- to be any or all 
of them. She is dressed in a very un-goddesslike 



SOUTHAMPTON. 41 

short waist. Strange, that a woman who had her 
classic eye, and her passion for moulding forms 
after antique models, should submit to the tyran- 
ny of a French milliner's levelling fashion ! Her 
beautiful arms are classically manifest — bare as Ju- 
no's. Lawrence employed thirty hours on each of 
them ! 

We all lunched with Mrs. . An English 

lunch is our country dinner, served at our country 
hour, and of much the same material. Different in 
the respect, that whatever is to be eaten is placed on 
the table at the same time, and very different, inas- 
much as you are served by three or four men in liv- 
ery, instead of a girl in a dress unquestionably of 

her own choosing. Mrs. 's vegetable-dishes 

are a precious relic of Mrs. Siddons. They are sil- 
ver, and bear her initials and an inscription from the 
lawyers of Edinburgh, by whom they were present- 
ed to her. 

After lunch, Miss took us in her carriage, 

stowing the girls in the rumble, through Lord Ash- 
down's and Mr. Fleming's parks. We drove a mile 
through the latter, with thick borderings and plan- 
tations of shrubbery on each side of us, so matted, 
and with such a profusion of rhododendron as to re- 
mind me of passages in the wilds of western Vir- 
ginia. This, you know, is a plant not native to this 
country, but brought with much pains and expense 
from ours. . We have not English wealth to lavish 
on parks and gardens, but with taste and industry 

D2 



42 SOUTHAMPTON. 

we might bring to our homes, and gratefully cherish, 
the beautiful plants that God has sown at broad- 
cast in our forests. I declare to you, when I remem- 
ber how seldom I have seen our azalias, calmias, 
&c, in cultivated grounds, while I meet them here 
in such abundance, it seems like finding a neglect- 
ed child housed and gently entertained by stran- 
gers. Some of us returned to dine and pass the 

evening with Mrs. and her daughter ; and we 

left B Lodge warmed to the heart's core with 

this realization of our old poetic ideas of English 
hospitality.* 



Friday, June 13. — We left Southampton this 
morning, feeling much, when we parted from Captain 
Hall and his family, as if we were launching alone 
on the wide world. He told us at the last, if we 
got into any difficulty, if we were at Johnny Groat's, 
to send for him. As far as the most thoughtful kind- 
ness and foresight can provide against difficulties, he 
has done so for us. Both he and Mrs. Hall have 
given us letters of introduction (unasked), and a 
score, at least, to their friends in London and Scot- 
land, people of rank and distinction. To these they 
have added addresses to tradespeople of all descrip- 

* I have abstained from transferring from my journal whatever 
was personal to our kind entertainers, certainly the paramount 
charm of their place. We owed the warmth of our.reception to let- 
ters from their and our dear friend, Mrs. Butler. To her, too, we 
owed our admission to some of the best society in London, where 
her genius and character are held in the high estimation they deserve 



SOUTHAMPTON. 43 

tions, and all manner of instructions as to our goings 
on ; a kind of mapping and charting inestimable to 
raw travellers like us. He has even had lodgings 
provided for us in London by his man of business, 
so that we shall find a home in that great, and, to us, 
unknown sea. 

You will smile at all our letters running upon this 
theme of Captain H., and you may perchance fan- 
cy that our preconceived opinion of this gentleman 
is rather bribed by personal kindness than rectified. 
But remember that we had no claim upon his 
kindness. It is not our personal benefits (though 
Heaven knows we are most grateful for them) that I 
am anxious to impress upon you, but to give you the 
advantage of our point of sight of a character that 
some of our people have misunderstood, and some 
misrepresented. I have no such crusading notions, 
as that I could set a whole nation's opinion right, 
but I should hope to affect yours, and perhaps half 
a dozen others. Captain H. has a mind wide 
awake, ever curious and active. These qualities 
have been of infinite service to him as a traveller, 
and to his charmed readers as w T ell ; but it is easy to 
see how, among strangers, they might betray him into 
some little extravagances. Then he is a seaman 
and a Briton, and liable on both scores to unphilo- 
sophic judgments. With the faults that proceed 
from an excess of activity, we, of all people, should 
be most patient ; and certainly we might have for- 
given some mistaken opinions in conformity to pre- 
conceived patterns, instead of imputing them to po- 



44 SOUTHAMPTON. 

Iitical prostitution. We might, indeed, had we been 
- wise, have found many of his criticisms just and sal- 
utary, and thanked him for them, and have delight- 
ed in his frankness, his sagacity, and his vein of very 
pleasant humour ; but, alas ! our Saxon blood is al- 
ways uppermost, and we go on cherishing our infal- 
libility, and, like a snappish cook, had much rather 
spoil our own pie than have a foreign finger in it. 
It is an old trick of the English bull-dog to bark at 
his neighbour's door, but let him do so if he will 
caress you at his own. 



I feel, my dear C, a disposition to self-glorifica- 
tion from one circumstance of our journey from 
Southampton. My girls and I took our seats on the 
top of the coach, paying for two inside seats in case 
of rain, of which, I take it in England, there are al- 
ways nine chances out of ten. You may well ask 
why I boast of this, when we gained the obvious ad- 
vantage of using our eyes in this rich and new scene ; 
and when they are nearly as useless inside the coach 
as were Jonah's to him in his " extra exclusive." 
You know I am a coward on instinct, and to a novice 
a seat on the top of an English coach is startling ; 
and it is somewhat perilous, the coach being topheavy 
with the number of passengers and mass of baggage, 
and we were not yet accustomed to the security of 
these smooth roads. And, besides, you cannot ex- 
pect us to be exempt from the general weakness of 
wishing to impress the grooms, porters, coachmen, 



SOUTHAMPTON. 45 

innkeepers, &c, with our potentiality ! Many Amer- 
icans give up the delight of travelling in England 
on account of its expensiveness, or come home with 
loud outcries against it, when, if they would forego 
the distinction of posting, and condescend to the hu- 
mility of an outside seat (infinitely the pleasantest), 
they might travel here quite as cheaply as they can 
by coach at home.* 

Did the sacrifices that a traveller makes to ap- 
pearances never strike you as one of the ludicrous 
fatuities of human conduct, when you consider that 
his observers do not know whether he be " Giles 
Jolt" or any other member of the human family ? 

We had good reason to be satisfied with our po- 
sition. The coachman had driven twenty years on 
this same road, and was familiar with every incLof 
ground ; he exchanged salutations with the people by 
the way, had many professional jokes, and pointed 
out to us the wayside lions, a seat of Lord Wel- 
lington, a hunting-box of George IV., &c. We 
came through Winchester and Basingstoke, passed 
many a field covered with the crimson blush of the 
cinquefoil, and bounded by hedges thick set with 
flowering shrubs. I trust your grandchildren may 
see such in our Berkshire. I had written to Miss Mit- 
ford my intention of passing the evening with her, and 
as we approached her residence, which is in a small 

* I should have said, as they could have done at home. The 
rates of travelling expenses are diminishing at such a rate, that you 
cannot predicate of this year what was true of the last. What is 
fixed in the United States ? A guide-book, written one season, would 
be in good part useless the next. 



46 SOUTHAMPTON. 

village near Reading, I began to feel a little tremu- 
lous about meeting my " unknown friend." Cap- 
tain Hall had made us all merry with anticipating 
the usual denouement of a mere epistolary acquaint- 
ance. \\ i%% \&\i 

Our coachman (who, after our telling him we 
were Americans, had complimented us on our speak- 
ing English, and "very good English too"*) pro- 
fessed an acquaintance of some twenty years' stand- 
ing with Miss M., and assured us that she was one 
of the "cleverest women in England," and "the 
doctor" (her father) an "'earty old boy." And 
when he reined his horses up to her door, and she 
appeared to receive us, he said, " Now you would 
not take that little body there for the great author, 
would you V 9 and certainly we should have taken 
her for nothing but a kindly gentlewoman, who had 
never gone beyond the narrow sphere of the most 
refined social life. My foolish misgivings (H. must 
answer for them) were forgotten in her cordial wel- 
come. K. and I descended from our airy seat; 
and when Miss M. became aware who M. was, she 

said, " What ! the sister of pass my door ? 

that must never be ;" so M., nothing loath, joined 
us. Miss M. is truly " a little body," and dressed a 
little quaintly, and as unlike as possible to the faces 
we have seen of her in the magazines, which all have 

* We had a compliment of the same stamp the next day from a 
Londoner who was in the car with us. He assured us, with praise- 
worthy condescension, that we spoke English "uncommon cor- 
rect." 



SOUTHAMPTON. 47 

a broad humour bordering on coarseness. She has a 
pale gray, soul-lit eye, and hair as white as snow : a 
wintry sign that has come prematurely upon her, as 
like signs come upon us, while the year is yet 
fresh and undecayed. Her voice has a sweet, 
low tone, and her manner a naturalness, frankness, 
and affectionateness that we have been so long fa- 
miliar with in their other modes of manifestation, 
that it would have been indeed a disappointment 
not to have found them. 

She led us directly through her house into her 
garden, a perfect bouquet of flowers. " I must show 
you my geraniums while it is light," she said, " for 
I love them next to my father." And they were 
indeed treated like petted children, guarded by a 
very ingenious contrivance from the rough visitation 
of the elements. They are all, I believe, seedlings. 
She raises two crops in a year, and may well pride 
herself on the variety and beauty of her collec- 
tion. Geraniums are her favourites ; but she does 
not love others less that she loves these more. The 
garden is filled, matted with flowering shrubs and 
vines ; the trees are wreathed with honeysuckles and 
roses ; and the girls have brought away the most 
splendid specimens of heart's-ease to press in their 
journals. Oh, that I could give some of my coun- 
trywomen a vision of this little paradise of flowers, 
that they might learn how taste and industry, and 
an earnest love and study of the art of garden-cul- 
ture, might triumph over small space and small 
means. 



48 SOUTHAMPTON. 

Miss Mitford's house is, with the exception of cer- 
tainly not more than two or three, as small and hum- 
ble as the smallest and humblest in our village of 

S ; and such is the difference, in some respects, in 

the modes of expense in this country from ours ; she 
keeps two men-servants (one a gardener), two or 
three maid-servants, and two horses. In this very 
humble home, which she illustrates as much by her 
unsparing filial devotion as by her genius, she re- 
ceives on equal terms the best in the land. Her lit- 
erary reputation might have gained for her this ele- 
vation, but she started on vantage ground, being al- 
lied by blood to the Duke of Bedford's family. We 
passed a delightful evening, parting with the hope 
of meeting again, and with a most comfortable feel- 
ing that the ideal was converted into the real. So 
much for our misgivings. Faith is a safer principle 
than some people hold it to be.* 

We finished our journey by the great western 
railway. It is little short of desecration to cut up 
this garden country, where all rough ways were al- 
ready made smooth, all crooked ones straight, with 
railroads. They seem to have been devised for our 
uncultivated lands and gigantic distances. 



London, \Ath. — Here we are, with a house to our- 
selves, in modest, comfortable, clean lodgings (but 

* I have not dared to draw aside the curtain of domestic life, and 
give the particulars of Miss M.'s touching devotion to her father. 
" He is all to me, and I am all to him," she said. God help them in 
this parting world ! 



LONDON. 49 

is not all England clean 1) in Halfmoon-street. It 
is the London season, so called from Parliament be- 
ing in session, and all the fashion and business of 
the kingdom congregating here at this time. We 
are told that we are. fortunate in getting any lodg- 
ings at the West End, while the town is so filled; 
and at the West End you must be if you would 
hope to live in the daylight of the known, that is, 
the fashionable world.* 

Would you know what struck me as we drove 
from the depot of the western railroad to our lodg- 
ings ? the familiar names of the streets, the neutral 
tint of the houses, the great superiority of the pave- 
ments to ours, and, having last seen New- York, the 
superior cleanliness of the streets. I have all my 
life heard London spoken of as dismal and dark. 
It may be so in winter ; it is not now. The 

* As exact details of expenses are useful to inexperienced travel- 
lers, I may perhaps do a service to some one by giving the precise 
cost of our London lodging. We had a drawing and a dining room, 
a bedroom and dressing-room on the second floor, and three bed- 
rooms on the third floor (all small), for seven guineas a week, and 
one guinea for firing and attendance. Under the term firing is 
included cooking. We lived simply, having regularly two dishes 
meat (or fish and meat), a pudding or tart, and the fruits in sea- 
son, strawberries and cherries. Our breakfast was coffee and tea, 
bread, butter, rolls, muffins, and eggs. The cost to each person 
(one gentleman and five ladies) was a trifle more than two pounds 
twelve shillings (thirteen dollars) a week. Every article of food 
was perfect of its kind, and well served. The most fastidious 
could have found no ground of complaint. The high prices were 
raging when we left New-York, and we found the common articles 
of food in London not higher, in some cases lower; for instance, 
for excellent cauliflowers we gave sixpence— twelve and a half 
cents. 

Vol. I.— E 



50 LONDON. 

smoke colour of the houses is soft and healthy to 
the eye, so unlike our flame-coloured cities, that 
seem surely to typify their destiny, which is, you 
know, to be burned up, sooner or later — sooner, in 
most cases. And, having had nothing to do to-day 
but gaze from our windows, what think you has 
struck us as quite different from a relative position 
in our own city 1 The groups of ballad-singers, 
consisting usually of a man and woman, and one of 
two children. I have seen such in New-York half 
a dozen times in my life, and they are always people 
from the Continent of Europe. Here, not half an 
hour passes without a procession of these licensed, 
musical, and, to us novices, irresistible beggars. 
Then there are the hawkers of flowers, as irresisti- 
ble, lovely bouquets of moss-rosebuds, geraniums, 
heliotropes, and what not. As we are in the neigh- 
bourhood of Piccadilly and the parks, our street is 
quite a thoroughfare, and we are every moment ex- 
claiming at the superb equipages that pass our win- 
dow. Nothing, I presume, of the kind in the world 
exceeds the luxury of an English carriage with all 
its appointments; and yet, shall I confess to you 
that, after my admiration of their superb horses was 
somewhat abated, I have felt, in looking at them, 
much as I have at seeing a poor little child made a 
fool of by the useless and glittering trappings of his 
hobbyhorse. What would our labouring men, who 
work up the time and strength God gives them into 
independence, domestic happiness, and political ex- 
istence — what would they, what should they say, 






LONDON. 51 

at seeing three — four servants — strong, tall, well- 
made young men (for such are selected) — attached 
to a coach, one coachman and three footmen, two, 
of course, perfect supernumeraries 1 We " moral- 
ize the spectacle," too ; observe the vacant counte- 
nance and flippant air of these men, chained to the 
circle of half a dozen ideas, and end with a laugh 
at their fantastical liveries ; some in white turned 
with red, and some in red turned with white. Fan- 
cy a man driving, with a militia general's hat, feath- 
ers and all, with three footmen, one seated beside 
him and two behind, all with white coats, scarlet 
plush breeches, white silk stockings, rosettes on 
their shoes, and gold-headed batons in their white- 
gloved hands. There must be something " rotten 
in the state," when God's creatures, " possible an- 
gels," as our friend Doctor T. calls all humankind, 
look up to a station behind a lord's coach as a priv- 
ileged place. " Possible angels" they may be, but, 
alas, their path is hedged about with huge improba- 
bilities ! 



London. — Since the first day of our arrival here, 
my dear C, we have been going on with the swift- 
ness of railroad motion. I have made, en passant, 
a few notes in the hope of retaining impressions that 
were necessarily slight and imperfect ; and now, at 
my first leisure, I am about to expand them for you. 
You shall have them honestly, without colouring or 
exaggeration. I can scarcely hope they will have 



52 LONDON. 

any other merit ; for, without any humble disclaimers 
which might be made as to the incompetency of the 
individual — that individual a woman always more or 
less hampered — what is one month in London ! one 
month among two millions of people ! 

Coming to the cities of the Old World, as we do, 
with our national vanities thick upon us, with our 
scale of measurement graduated by Broadway, the 
City-Hall, the Battery, and the Boston-Common, 
we are confounded by the extent of London, by its 
magnificent parks, its immense structures, by its 
docks and warehouses, and by all its details of con- 
venience and comfort, and its aggregate of incalcu- 
lable wealth. We begin with comforting ourselves 
with the thought " why these people have been at 
it these two thousand years, and Heaven knows how 
much longer." By degrees envy melts into self-com- 
placency, and we say " they are our relations ;" 
" our fathers had a hand in it ;" we are of the same 
race, " as our new-planned cities and unfinished tow- 
ers" shall hereafter prove. Mr. Webster said to me 
after we had both been two or three weeks here, 
"What is your impression now of London? my 
feeling is yet amazement." 

I got my best idea of the source of the wealth 
and power of the country from visiting the docks 
and warehouses, which we did thoroughly, under 
the conduct of our very kind countryman, Mr. P. 
Vaughan, whose uncle, Mr. William Vaughan, had 
much to do with the suggesting and planning these 
great works. Do not fear I am about to give you a 



LONDON. 53 

particular description of them, which you will get so 
much better from any statistics of London. Our 
" woman's sphere," the boundaries of which some of 
my sex are making rather indefinite, does not ex- 
tend to such subjects. We yet have the child's 
pleasure of wonder, and we had it in perfection in 
passing through an apartment a hundred feet in 
length, appropriated to cinnamon, the next, of equal 
extent, to cloves, and so on and so on to a wine- 
vault under an acre of ground. 

I never enter the London parks without regretting 
the folly (call it not cupidity) of our people, who, 
when they had a whole continent at their disposal, 
have left such narrow spaces for what has been so 
well called the lungs of a city ; its breathing-places 
they certainly are.* I do not know the number of 
squares in London. I should think a hundred as 
large as our boasted St. John's Park, the Park, 
Washington and Union Squares. Their parks appear 
to me to cover as much ground as half our city of 
New- York. The Regent's Park, the largest, con- 
tains 450 acres; Hyde Park, 395. Besides these, 
there are Green and St. James's Parks, which, how- 
ever, are both much smaller than Hyde Park. I 
wonder if some of our speculating Zo£-mad people 

* A friend has suggested that this censure is unjust in regard to 
our largest cities, New-York and Philadelphia ; that, being bj^ilt on 
a limited space enclosed by great bodies of water, our people could 
not afford to devote building-ground to other purposes. Bui nave 
they done what they could ? What is the justification for the sacri- 
fice of Hoboken ? and has anything been done so secure the iefine- 
raent of pleasure-grounds in our smaller townp and villages ' 

E2 



54 LONDON. 

would not like to have the draining of their adorn- 
ing-waters, and the laying out of the ground into 
streets and building-lots, a passion as worthy as 
Scott's old Cummer's for streaking a corse. It would, 
indeed, be changing the living into the dead to drive 
the spirit of health and the healthiest pleasure from 
these beautiful grounds. The utilitarian principle, 
in its narrowest sense, has too much to do in our 
country. I can fancy a Western squatter coming into 
Regent's Park and casting his eye over its glades, 
gardens, and shrubberies, exclaim, " Why, this is the 
best of parara* land ; I'll squat here !" 

Yes, dear C, that surely is a narrow utilitarianism 
which would make everything convertible to the meat 
that perisheth ; and to that would sacrifice God's 
rich provisions for the wants of man's spirit. The 
only chance a London tradesman has to feel that he 
has anything nobler in his nature than a craving 
stomach, is when he comes forth on Sunday from 
his smoky place of daily toil into these lovely green 
parks, where he and his young ones can lay them- 
selves down on the green sward, under the shadow of 
majestic trees, amid the odour of flowers and the 
singing of birds : all God's witnesses even to their 
dulled senses. We have 300,000 souls now in New- 
York. We shall soon have our million ; but, alas ! 
we have no such paradise in preparation for them ! 

Th*e Zoological Garden is in Regent's Park. As 
a garden merely, it is very beautiful ; and I do not 
doubt its planner or planners had reference to the 

* The Western Anglice for prairie. 



LONDON. 55 

original type of all gardens. Its various and vast 
number of animals remind you at every turn of 
Milton's Paradise, though the women in blue and 
purple satin, and the men in the last fashion of 
Bond-street, bear little resemblance to the original 
specimens of those who, with their loyal subjects, 
were " to find pastime and bear rule." 

" For contemplation, he and valour formed ; 
For softness, she and sweet attractive grace." 

All the representatives of the bird and animal 
creation that were housed in the ark appear to have 
their descendants here; and, as if to guard them 
against dying of homesickness, they have their lit- 
tle surroundings made as far as possible to resemble 
their native places. They are accommodated ac- 
cording to the national taste, with private lodgings, 
and space to roam and growl at will a 1' Anglais. 
There is sparkling water for aquatic birds, and 
ponds for the otter to dive in. There is space for 
the dainty giraffe, who seems hardly to touch the 
ground for very delicateness, to rove over, and trees, 
to whose topmost branches he stretches his flexile 
neck. The bear has his area, with poles to hug and 
climb, and the elephant his tank to swim in, and 
forest-like glades to lumber along ; and camels we 
saw in the distance grazing on fields of green grass ; 
and then there are " rows of goodliest trees" and 
"verdurous walls;" "blossoms and fruits;" all the 
luxuries of paradise, save authority, solitude, inno- 
cence, and a few such light matters. The garden 



56 LONDON. 

has not been open more than twelve years. The 
price of admission is only one shilling English. 
This we should think liberal enough in our demo- 
cratic country. The pleasure is made more exclu- 
sive on Sunday by the requisition of a member's 
ticket, but these are easily obtained. Several were 
sent us unasked. If you care for such shows, you 
may then, in addition to the birds and beasts, see 
the gentry and nobility ! 



I fancy that most of our people, when they arrive 
in London, go to the Tower and Westminster Abbey, 
as the sights they have most and longest thirsted for. 
I have been told that Webster had not been half an 
hour in London when he took a cab and drove to 
the Tower ; and I liked the boyish feeling still 
fresh and perceptible, like the little rivulet whose 
hue marks it distinctly long after it has entered some 
great river. I have not seen the Tower; not for 
lack of interest in it, for, ever since in my childhood 
my heart ached for the hapless state-prisoner that 
passed its portals, I have longed to see it. We went 
there at an unfortunate hour ; the doors were closed ; 
and I was like a crossed child when I felt that I 
should never see the Black Prince's armour, nor the 
axe that dealt the deathblow to Anne Boleyn, nor 
the prison of Sir Walter Raleigh, nor any of the 
Tower's soul-moving treasures. We were admitted 
v/ithin the outer wall, which encloses an area where 



LONDON. 57 

three thousand people live ; a fact that, as it is all I 
have to communicate, will, I hope, surprise you as 
much as it did me. 

We went three times to Westminster Abbey, and 
spent many hours there ; hours that had more sensa- 
tion in them than months, I might almost say years, 
of ordinary life. Why, my dear C, it is worth 
crossing the Atlantic to enter the little door by 
which we first went into the Abbey, and have 
your eyes light on that familiar legend, " rare 
Ben Jonson !" And then to walk around and 
see the monuments of Shakspeare, Spenser, Milton, 
and of other inspired teachers. You have strange 
and mixed feelings. You approach nearer to them 
than ever before, but it is in sympathy with their 
mortality. You realize for the first time that they 
are dead ; for who, of all your friends, have been 
so living to you as they ? We escaped from 
our automaton guide, and walked about as if in a 
trance. 

There is much imbodied history in the Abbey — 
facts recorded in stone. And there are startling 
curiosities of antiquity, such, for example, as a coro- 
nation-chair as old as Edward the Confessor's time, 
and the helmet of Henry V., and his saddle, the 
very saddle he rode at Agincourt. I thought, as I 
looked at it, and felt the blood tingling in my veins, 
that his prophecy of being " freshly remembered," 
even " to the ending of the world," was in fair prog- 
ress to fulfilment. 



58 LONDON. 

The Gothic architecture of parts of the Abbey is, 
I believe, quite unequalled; but the effect of the 
whole is impaired by Protestant spoliations and al- 
terations. Henry the Seventh's chapel, with its 
carved stone-ceiling, is a proverb and miracle of 
beauty. 

I was grievously disappointed in St. Paul's. I 
early got, from some schoolbook, I believe, an im- 
pression that it was a model of architecture, that Sir 
Christopher Wren was a Divine light among artists, 
and sundry other false notions. It stands in the 
heart of the city of London, and is so defaced, and 
absolutely blackened by its coal-smoke, that you 
would scarcely suspect it to be of that beautiful ma- 
terial white marble. A more heavy, inexpressive 
mass can hardly be found cumbering the ground. 
It takes time and infinite pains, depend on't, to edu- 
cate the Saxon race out of their natural inaptitude 
in matters of taste. As you stand within and under 
the dome, the effect is very grand and beautiful. 
The statues here and at Westminster struck me as 
monstrous, and even curious, productions for an age 
when Grecian art was extant, or, indeed, for any 
age; for there is always the original model, the 
human form. The artists have not taken man for 
their model, but the English man, of whom grace 
can scarcely be predicated, and the Englishman, too, 
in his national, and sometimes in his hideous mili- 
tary costume. 

One of the sights that much pleased me was the 
Inns of Court. The entrance to it is from one of 



LONDON. 59 

the thronged thoroughfares (Fleet-street, I believe), 
to which it seems a sort of episode, or, rather, like 
a curious antique pendent to a chain of modern 
workmanship. The ground, now occupied by the 
lawyers, was formerly appropriated to the Knights 
Templars. Their chapel still remains ; a singular 
old structure it is. A part of it is in its original 
condition, as it was when the Du Bois Guiberts 
of the romantic days worshipped there. When 
I looked at their effigies in stone, I could almost 
hear their armour clanking and ringing on the pave- 
ment. 



As you will perceive from my barren report to 
you, I have given very little time to sight-seeing, 
and less to public amusements. I went once to 

Covent Garden Theatre with Mrs. . She has a 

free ticket, which admits two persons, one of the 
small fruits of her literary sowing, a species of labour 
which should produce to her a wide-spread and 
golden harvest. We went unattended — a new ex- 
perience to me. Necessity has taught women here 
more independence than with us, and it has its ad- 
vantages to both parties; the men are saved much 
bother, and the women gain faculty and freedom. 

Mrs. proceeded with as much ease as if she 

were going to her own room at home, and we met 
with no difficulty or impertinence whatever, not 
even a stare. The play was Henry V., as it is re- 
stored by Macready, who, with a zeal that all true 



60 LONDON. 

lovers of Shakspeare must venerate, is effacing the 
profane alterations of the poet's text; such man- 
gling, for instance, as Garrick made of the last scenes 
of Lear ; and, besides, is adding indescribably to the 
dramatic beauty of the representation by an elaborate 
conformity to the costume of the period which the 
play represents. Shakspeare himself would, I sus- 
pect, be somewhat startled by the perfection of sce- 
nic decoration and costume of Macready's presenta- 
tion of Henry V. While the choruses are rehearsing 
by Time, there is a pictorial exhibition of the scenes 
he describes ; and this is managed with such art as 
to appear to the spectator, not a picture, but an ac- 
tual scene. As he finishes, a curtain, which seems 
like a dissolving cloud, is withdrawn, and discloses 
the actors. 

Covent Garden Theatre is much larger, more ele- 
gant, and more commodiously arranged than the 
best of ours. There is a certain indefinite pleasure 
proceeding from seeing a play of Shakspeare play- 
ed in the land where he lived ; where he has seen 
them enacted, and himself enacted them. It is 
something hke going to a friend's house for the first 
time after a long and close friendship with him. A 
few days since we were at Southampton, and passed 
through the arch under which Henry led his army 
when he embarked for the " fair and lucky war." 
This, and the recurrence of the names of localities 
that are now within our daily drives, gave me the 
realizing sensation of which you may well be tired 
of hearing by this time. And, by-the-way, how T 



LONDON. 61 

could I describe this sensation without our expressive 
American (New-England ?) use of this word real- 
ize ? 

We went once to the Italian opera, and sat in the 
pit. The intermixture of gayly-dressed ladies with 
men in the pit gives it a civilized and lively aspect ; 
it is something like turning a forest into a flower- 
garden. The pit of the opera is filled with people 
of respectable condition, as you may suppose from 
the cost of any box large enough for five or six peo- 
ple being seven or eight guineas. We paid two 
dollars for a seat. Mrs. was with us, ex- 
pounding to us, and enjoying, as none but those 
who have the genius to the fingers' ends that 
makes the artist, can enjoy. The people who have 
the reputation of being the first singers in the world, 
sang : Grisi, the young Garcia, Persiani, La Blache, 
Tamburini, and a very interesting young man, the 
son of an Italian marquis, whose nom-de-guerre is 
Mario. The little queen was in her box behind a 
curtain, as carefully hidden from her people as an 
Oriental monarch ; not from any Oriental ideas of 
the sacredness of her person, but that she may cast 
off her royal dignity, and have the privilege of enjoy- 
ing unobserved, as we humble people do. No chari- 
ness of her countenance could make her " like the 
robe pontifical, ne'er seen but wondered at." She is 
a plain little body enough, as we saw when she pro- 
truded her head to bow to the high people in the box 
next to her : the queen-dowager, the Princess Ester- 
hazy, and so on. Ordinary is the word for her ; you 

Vol. I.— F 



62 LONDON. 

would not notice her among a hundred others in our 
village church. Just now she is suffering for the 
tragedy of Lady Flora, and fears are entertained, 
whenever she appears, that there will be voices to 
cry out " Where is Lady Flora ?" a sound that must 
pierce the poor young thing's heart. Ah ! she has 
come to the throne when royalty pays quite too dear 
for its whistle ! 

We had the ballet La Gitana after the singing — 
and Taglioni. No praise of her grace is exag- 
gerated. There is music in every movement of her 
arms ; and if she would restrict herself within the 
limits of decency, there could not be a more exqui- 
site spectacle of its kind than her dancing. I would 
give in to the ravings of her admirers, and allow that 
her grace is God's beautiful gift, and that fitting it 
is it should be so used. But could not this grace be 
equally demonstrated with a skirt a few inches lon- 
ger and rather less transparent 1 To my crude no- 
tions her positions are often disgusting ; and when 
she raised her leg to a right angle with her body, I 
could have exclaimed, as Carlyle did, " Merciful 
Heaven ! where will it end 1" 

Familiarity must dull the sense to these bad parts 
of the exhibition ; for Mrs. quoted a French- 
woman, who said, on seeing Taglioni, i( II faut etre 
sage pour danser comme ca" (one must be virtuous 
to dance like that). I should rather have said, " II 
ne faut pas etre femme pour danser comme ca." And 
I would divide the world, not as our witty friend 
does into men, women, and Mary Wolston- 



LONDON. 63 

crafts, but into men, women, and ballet-dancers. 
For surely a woman must have forgotten the in- 
stincts of her sex before she can dance even as Tag- 
lioni does. I am not apt, as you know, my dear C, 
to run a tilt against public amusements ; but I hold 
this to be an execrable one ; and, if my voice could 
have any influence, I would pray every modest wom- 
an and modest man, for why should this virtue be 
graduated by a different scale for the different sex- 
es 1 every modest man and woman, then, in our 
land to discountenance its advancement there. If 
we have not yet the perfection of a matured civiliza- 
tion, God save us from the corruptions that prelude 
and intimate its decline ! 



We spent a morning at the British Museum, and 
could have passed a month there profitably. It is 
on a magnificent scale, worthy this great nation. We 
have made few excursions out of London. We took 
the fourth of July to drive to Hampton Court ; and so 
bright and warm it was that, as far as the weather 
was concerned, we might have fancied ourselves at 
home, keeping our national festival. " Hampton's 
royal pile" was begun by Wolsey, who, " though of 
an humble stock," was born with a kingly ambition, 
and " fashioned to much honour from his cradle." 
His expenditure on this palace was most royal, and 
furnished, as you know, a convenient pretext for his 
master's displeasure. Henry put forth the lion's 
right — might— and took possession of it 5 and the 



64 LONDON. 

royal arms and badges of the Tudors are carved over 
the devices and arms of Wolsey. That part of the 
edifice which belongs to the age of the Tudors 
seemed to me alone to have any architectural inter- 
est or much beauty. It bears the marks of that era 
when feudal individual fortifications were giving 
place to the defences of a higher civilization ; when 
the country-house was superseding the castle. From 
the time of Henry VIII. to the first two Georges it 
has been at various times enlarged, and has been 
one of the regular establishments of the reigning 
family. It is now, with its extensive and beautiful- 
ly-ornamented grounds, given up to the public, who 
are admitted within the gates without a fee ! There 
is no picturesqueness, no natural beauty in the 
grounds, or, rather, to speak more accurately, in the 
face of the ground; for who shall presume to say 
that trees are not natural beauties, and such trees as 
the magnificent elms, chestnuts, and limes of Hamp- 
ton, the most surpassingly beautiful of all natural 
beauties 1 

There is one walk of a mile to the Thames, and 
there is shrubbery, and fountains, and artificial bits 
of water, and aquatic birds, and plants, as we have 
good reason to remember ; for one of our girls, fan- 
cying, with truly American naivete, they were grow- 
ing wild, and unchecked by the pithy admonition on 
sundry bits of board, " It is expected the public will 
protect what is intended for public enjoyment," 
tempted our friend P. to pluck a lotus for her. He 
was forthwith pounced on by a lad, one of the po- 



LONDON. 65 

lice curs, who seized for " the crown and country" 
the poor water-lily, and compelled P. to appear be- 
fore one of the officials. The regular fine was ten 
shillings English ; but the man was lenient ; and, on 
consideration of our being Americans (serai-barbari- 
ans ?), P. was let off with paying a slight penalty 
for his good-natured gallantry. . We left the gar- 
dens with reluctance for the duty of seeing the in- 
terior of the palace, and, beginning with a princely 
hall one hundred feet in length, we circulated 
through more banqueting-rooms, drawing-rooms, 
" king's sleeping-apartments," " queen's bed-cham- 
bers," " king's presence-chambers," " king's and 
queen's dressing-rooms," " queen's galleries," tapes- 
try galleries, and what not, than ever rose above the 
horizon of j r our plebeian imagination. 

The apartments are nearly all hung with pictures. 
There is little furniture, strictly so called, remaining, 
and what there is, is faded and timeworn. 

I give you the following opinion with all modesty, 
knowing that I am not a qualified judge ; the collec- 
tion of pictures struck me as proving that art is not 
native to the country. Of course the pictures are 
chiefly by foreign artists, but obtained by English- 
men who had an unlimited power of patronage and 
selection. In the immense number of pictures there 
are few to be remembered. The celebrated por- 
trait of Charles the First on horseback, by Vandyke, 
rivets you before it by its most sad and prophetic 
expression. It is such a portrait as Shakspeare 

F2 



66 LONDON. 

would have painted of Charles had he been an out- 
side painter. 

Sir Peter Lely's flesh-and-blood beauties of Charles 
the Second's time fill one apartment. Hamilton* and 
Mrs. Jameson have given these fair dames an im- 
mortality they do not merit. They are mere mortal 
beauties, and not even the best specimens of their 
kind. They are the women of the coarsest English 
comedies ; not such types of womanhood as Juliet, 
Desdemona, and Isabella. They have not the merit 
of individuality. They have all beautiful hands — 
probably because Sir Peter Lely could paint beauti- 
ful hands — and lovely necks and bosoms, most prod- 
igally displayed. There is a mixture of finery and 
negligence in their dress that would seem to indicate 
the born slattern transformed into the fine lady. It 
would take a Mohammed's heaven of such beauties 
to work up into the spiritual loveliness of an exqui- 
site head of St. Catharine, by Correggio, in another 
apartment of this gallery. What a text might be 
made of these counterfeit presentments of the sinner 
and the saint for an eloquent preacher in a Magda- 
len chapel ! 

Holbein's pictures were to me among the most 
interesting in the collection. Some one says that 
Holbein's pictures are " the prose of portrait-paint- 
ing," the least poetic department of the art. If for 
" prose" you may substitute truth (and truth, to the 
apprehension of some people, is mighty prosaic), the 
remark is just. The truth is so self-evident, the in- 

* Memoires de Grammont. 



LONDON. 67 

dividuality of his pictures so striking, that his por- 
traits impress you as delineations of familiar faces ; 
and there are the pictures of Wolsey, of Sir Thomas 
More, of Harry the Eighth at different epochs of his 
life, and of Francis the First. Think of seeing con- 
temporaneous pictures of these men by an exact 
hand ! " Oh, ye gentlemen who live at home at 
ease," ye may sometimes envy us; and this I say 
while every bone is aching with the fatigue of this 
sight-seeing day. 

We wound up with the gallery of Raphael's car- 
toons, so named, as perhaps you do not know, from 
their being done on a thin pasteboard, called in Ital- 
ian cartone. They were done by the order of Leo 
the Tenth, to serve as models for the tapestry of one 
of the halls of the Vatican, and sent to Brussels, 
where the tapestry was to be woven. After vicissi- 
tudes whose history would make a volume, William 
the Third had this gallery constructed for them, and 
they were taken from the boxes, in which they were 
found carelessly packed, and in slips, and put to- 
gether, and placed in plain frames. These cartoons 
are the delight of the artistic world. Perhaps the 
sketches and unfinished paintings of great artists 
give the best indications of those revelations of beau- 
ty that are made to their minds, and to which they 
can never give material expression. Can ideal per- 
fection be manifested by form and colour 1 My ad- 
miration of the cartoons was very earnest, albeit un- 
learned. Paul preaching at Athens struck me as the 
grandest among them. 



68 LONDON. 

We returned to London through Bushy Park, 
where the trees are the most magnificent I ever be- 
held, not excepting those of Western Virginia. We 
passed by Twickenham and Strawberry Hill, and 
came to Richmond Hill (Riche-mont) to dine. The 
view from this hill has been lauded in poetry and 
prose, and filled so many dull pages of dull journals, 
that I, in much mercy, spare you a repetition. If an 
Englishman were to select a single view in his coun- 
try to give a stranger the best idea of the character- 
istics of English rural scenery, it would probably be 
that of Richmond Hill. It is a sea of cultivation, 
nothing omitted, imperfect, or unfinished. There 
are no words to exaggerate these characteristics. It 
is all strawberries and cream ; satingly rich ; filled 

" With hills, and dales, and woods, and lawns, and spires, 
And glittering towers, and gilded streams, till all 
The stretching landscape into smoke decays." 

And yet, shall I confess it to you, I would have 
given all the pleasure I should get from it for a life- 
time for one glance from S 's hill at the valley 

with its wooden houses, straggling brown fences, 
and ragged husbandry ! Yes, and apart from home 
associations, is there not more to kindle emotion in 
that valley, lying deep in her encircling hills with 
their rich woodlands and rocky steeps, than in this 
monotonous beauty? The one is a drawing-room 
lady, the other a wood-nymph. 

We sent away our carriage, and came home m a 

u steamer, which was crowded when we got on board. 

At first we looked around in the most self-compla- 



LONDON. 69 

cent manner, expecting, with our American notions, 
that seats would be offered on every side, as they 
would assuredly have been to all us womankind 
in one of our own steamers. Not a foot stirred. 
Some of us were positively unable to stand, and for . 
those Mr. P. made an appeal to some men, who re- 
fused without hesitation, appearing to think our ex- 
pectations were impertinent. We were too far gone 
to be fastidious, so we adopted the backwoods' ex- 
pedient, and squatted upon what unoccupied territory 
we could find. If such personal selfishness and dis- 
courtesy is the result of a high civilization, I am glad 
we have not yet attained it. The general indiffer- 
ence of our companions in the steamer to the scene- 
ry of the river reminded us of the strictures of 
English travellers in America in similar situations. 
Nothing can be more fallacious than the broad in- 
ferences drawn from such premises. They were 
probably people intent on errands of business, or, 
like us, tired parties of pleasure ; and I am sure, at 
that moment, nothing less than Niagara or the Alps 
could have excited us to express an emotion. We 
landed at Hungerford stairs: R. said it reminded 
him of the landing-place at Chicago. It was rude 
enough for the Far West. You may imagine our 
wearied condition when I tell you that when we ar- 
rived at home, the girls voluntarily let me off from 
a promise to chaperone them to Mrs. B 's con- 
cert, where Grisi and the other Italian stars were 
" choiring — to young-eyed cherubims," no doubt. 
We have been to Windsor, with the great advan- 



70 LONDON. 

tage of Mrs. for our companion and guide. 

She puts a soul and a voice into dumb things, and 
her soul ! We failed to get a permission to see the 
private apartments, though Lady B. and some other 
potent friends stirred in our behalf. Only a certain 
number of tickets are issued during the week, and 
our application was too late ; so we could not see the 
luxurious furnishings for royal domestic life, if roy- 
alty may have domestic life, or ever in 

" Bed majestical 
Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave 
Who, with a body fill'd and vacant mind, 
Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread." 

Windsor Castle, you know, is rich with the accu- 
mulated associations of ages, having been begun by 
Henry ILL, and enlarged and enriched from time to 
time down to George L, who put it in complete 
order. It stands on an eminence just above the lit- 
tle town of Windsor, which, built of brick and stone, 
is compact and clean, as is everything English, in- 
dividual and congregate. It is said to be the best 
specimen of castellated architecture in England. 
Certainly it is very beautiful, and the most beautiful 
thing about it is the view from the terrace, which it 
would be little better than impertinent to describe in 
any other words than Gray's, in his invocation to 
those who stand on the terrace : 

" And ye, that from the stately brow 
Of Windsor's heights, the expanse below 
Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey, 
Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among, 
Wanders the hoary Thames along 
His silver winding way." 



LONDON. 71 

But such a mead ! such turf! such shade ! " Father 
Thames" might be compared to an old king wind- 
ing his way through his court : the very sheep that 
were lying on the grass under the majestic trees 
in the " home park," looked like princes of the blood. 
The most thought-awakening object in the view is 
undoubtedly the Gothic pile of Eton College with its 
spires and antique towers. When the queen is at 
Windsor she walks every Sunday on this terrace, 
where she is liable to be jostled by the meanest of 
her subjects ; and as the railway from London passes 
within a mile and a half of Windsor, she must often 
endure there collisions to which English blood has 
such repugnance. 

We spent some hours in going through the mag- 
nificent apartments of the palace, looking at the pic- 
tures, the Gobelin tapestry, &c, &c. The quaint, 
curious banqueting-room of the knights of the gar- 
ter, with their insignia, pleased me best. Vacant pla- 
ces are left for future knights ; but how much longer 
an institution will last that is a part of a worn-out 
machine, is a question which your children, dear C, 
may live to see solved. 

We had enough of the enjoying spirit of children 
to be delighted, and felt much in the humour of 
the honest man who said to Prince Esterhazy when 
he was blazing in diamonds, " Thank you for your 
diamonds." " Why do you thank me ?" naturally 
asked the prince. " You have the trouble of them, 
and I the pleasure of looking at them." Wise and 
happy man ! He solved a puzzling problem. In 



72 LONDON. 

truth, the monarch has not the pleasure of property 
in Windsor Castle that almost every American citi- 
zen has in the roof that shelters him. " I congrat- 
ulate your majesty on the possession of so beautiful 
a palace," said some foreign prince to whom Victo- 
ria was showing it. " It is not mine, but the coun- 
try's," she replied. And so it is, and all within it. 
She may not give away a picture, or even a footstool. 

We went into St. George's chapel, which is inclu- 
ded in the pile of buildings. We saw there the 
beautiful effect produced by the sun shining through 
the painted windows, throwing all the colours of the 
rainbow on the white marble pillars and pavement. 
The royal family are buried in the vaults of this 
chapel. There is an elaborate monument in wretch- 
ed taste in one corner, to the Princess Charlotte. 
We trod on a tablet in the pavement that told us that 
beneath it were lying the remains of Henry VIII. 
and Jane Seymour ! It is such memorials as these 
that we are continually meeting, which, as honest 
uncle Stephen says, " give one feelings." 

Lady B. had said to me in a note, " if you attend 
service in St. George's chapel, observe the waving 
of the banners to the music. It seems like a strange 
sympathy with the tones of the organ before one re- 
flects on the cause." We did attend the service, 
and realized the poetic idea. The banner of every 
knight of the garter, from the beginning of the in- 
stitution, is hung in the choir. 

This wasvthe third time we had been present, 
since we came to England, at worship in the tem- 



LONDON. 73 

i 

pies into which art has breathed its soul. First in 
"Winchester Cathedral, then at Westminster Abbey, 
and now at this old royal chapel. The daily service 
appointed by the Church was performing with the 
careless and heartless air of prescription. The cler- 
gyman and clerk hurried sing-songing through the 
form of prayers, that, perfect as they are, will only 
rise on the soul's wings. I felt the Puritan struggling 
at my heart, and could have broken out with old 
Mause's fervour, if not her eloquence. I thought of 
our summer Sunday service in dear J.'s " long par- 
lour." Not a vacant place there. The door open 
into the garden, the children strewed round the door- 
step, their young faces touched with an expression of 
devotion and love such as glows in the faces of the 
cherubs of the old pictures ; and for vaulted roof, col- 
umns, and storied glass, we had the blue sky, the ever- 
lasting hills, and lights and shadows playing over 
them, all suggestive of devotion, and in harmony with 
the pure and simple doctrine our friend Dr. Follen 
taught us. To me, there was more true worship in 
those all-embracing words " Our Father /" as he ut- 
tered them, than in all the task-prayers I have heard in 
these mighty cathedrals. Here it is the temple that is 
greatest. Your mind is preoccupied, filled with the 
outward world. The monuments of past ages and 
the memorials of individual greatness are before you. 
Your existence is amplified; your sympathies are 
carried far back ; the " inexorable past" does give 
up its dead. Wherever your eye falls you see 
the work of a power new to you — the creative power 
Vol. L— G 



74 LONDON. 

of art. You see forms of beauty which never enter- 
ed into your " forge of thought." You are filled 
with new and delightful emotions, but they spring 
from new impressions of the genius of man, of his 
destiny and history. No ; these cathedrals are not 
like the arches of our forests, the temples for inevita- 
ble worship, but they are the fitting place for the 
apotheosis of genius.* 

I promised to give you honestly my impressions, 
and I do so. I may have come too old and inflex- 
ible to these temples; but, though I feel their beauty 
thrilling my heart and brimming my eyes, they do 
not strike me as in accord with the simplicity, 
universality, and spirituality of the Gospel of Jesus. 
Some modern unbelievers maintain that Christianity 
is a worn-out form of religion. Is it not rather true 
that the spirit escapes from the forms in which man, 
always running to the material, would imbody if? 

We took our lunch, and let me, en passant, bless 
the country where you can always command what is 
best suited u to restore the weak and 'caying nature," 
as pathetically called it in his before-dinner 

* If perchance there is one among my readers unacquainted with 
Bryant's Poems, he may thank me for referring to his Forest Hymn, 
beginning thus : 

" The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learn'd 

To hew the shaft and lay the architrave, 

And spread the roof above them ; ere he framed 

The lofty vault, to gather and roll back 

The sound of anthems ; in the darkling wood, 

Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down, 

And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks 

And supplication." 



LONDON. 75 

grace. For lunch they give you a cold round of 
beef, juicy and tender; ham, perfectly cured, per- 
fectly cooked, delicious bread and butter, or, indeed 
what you will, and all so neatly served. Oh, my 
dear C, mortifying contrasts are forced on my ever- 
home-turning thoughts !* 

We walked to Eton, and, most fortunately, came 
upon its classic play-ground at the moment the boys 
were let loose upon it* Of course, it was impossible 
not to recall Gray's doleful prophecy while looking 

at some former generation of Eton boys. Mrs. ■ 

repeated them : 

" These shall the fury passions tear, 
The vultures of the mind ; 
Disdainful anger, pallid fear, 
And shame that skulks behind; 
Or pining love shall waste their youth, 
Or jealousy, with rankling tooth, 
That inly gnaws the secret heart, 
And envy wan, and faded care, 
Grim-visaged, comfortless despair, 
And sorrow's piercing dart." 

This is undoubtedly powerful poetry, but is it the 
true sentiment 1 I never liked it, and liked it less 
than ever when looking at these young creatures, 
among whom are the future teachers and benefactors 
of their land ; it may be a Collingwood, a Wilber- 

* What would probably be served for an extempore lunch at an 
American inn? Bread and butter (probably fresh bread, and possi- 
bly not fresh butter), pies, cakes, and sweetmeats. May not the su 
perior muscle and colour of the English be ascribed in part to our 
different modes of feeding ? Our inns improve from season to sea- 
son, and will, in proportion as our modes of living become more wise 
and salutary. 



76 LONDON. 

force, a Romilly, a Hallam. Should not the poet 
have seen within these bounding young frames im- 
measurable faculties, capacities for love and virtue, 
that eternity cannot exhaust? 

The children here strike me as not having the 
bright, intellectual countenances of ours, which indi- 
cate their early development ; but, as a physical pro- 
duction, the English boy, with his brilliant com- 
plexion and sturdy frame, is far superior to ours. 

We have nothing corresponding, my dear C, to 
the luxury of space and adornment of this play-ground 
of Eton. The eye does not perceive its boundaries ; 
the Thames passes through it, and the trees have been 
growing, and, at a fair rate, for hundreds of years. 



My dear C, 
The London breakfast party is a species of. en- 
tertainment quite unknown to us, and we should not 
find it easy to acclimate it. It is not suited to our 
condition of society. Suppose E. attempting such 
a thing at New- York. She would naturally invite 
S. S. as the most agreeable woman of her acquaint- 
ance. The answer would probably be, " The chil- 
dren are ailing, and she cannot come." She, like 
most of our mothers, never leaves her house if there 
be a shadow in the nursery. Then Mrs. B. : " No, 
she expects a few friends to dinner, and she must 
overlook her servants;" and so on, and so on. But 
if the women, whose habits are most flexible, could 
be managed, where would you find half a dozen 



LONDON. 77 

merf at leisure ? D. must be at the office of the 
"Life and Trust" at nine; and of our agreeable 
poets — our home-lions — Bryant has his daily paper 
to get out, and Halleck, like poor Charles Lamb, 
his (only) " heavy works," his ledger, for his morn- 
ing task ; and, save some half dozen idlers, all the 
men in town are at their counting-houses or offices, 
steeped to the lips in business by nine o'clock in the 
morning. But here the case is quite different ; the 
women are not so hampered with domestic life, and 
the men are "rentiers" and masters of their time. 
The breakfast party is not, however, I believe, of 
long standing here. I have been told that it was 
introduced by that Mr. Rogers whose household 
designation among us is " Rogers the poet." 

The hour of the breakfast party is from ten to 
eleven. The number is, I believe, never allowed to 
exceed twelve ; and only comes up to that when 
the host is constrained, like a certain friend of ours, 
by his diffusive benevolence, to extend his invitation 
(his "ticket for six") to a caravan of travellers. 

The entertainment is little varied from our eight 
o'clock breakfasts. There are coffee, tea, and choco- 
late, rolls, toast, grated beef and eggs, and, in place 
of our solid beefsteaks and broiled chickens, rein- 
deers' tongues, sweetmeats, fruit, and ices. These 
are not bad substitutes for heavier viands, and for 
our variety of delicate hot cakes. You see none of 
these, unless it be the poorest of them all, a muffin. 

On some occasions there were guests invited to 
come after breakfast, to enjoy the social hour that 

G2 * 



78 LONDON. 






follows it. Now that ideas travel so rapidly from 
one quarter of the world to another, I trust some 
steamer will bear to Amertca that which is recently- 
received in England, and has, as long as other car- 
dinal points of philosophy, governed Continental 
society, viz., that eating and drinking is not a neces- 
sary element in social intercourse. 

We had the pleasure of a breakfast at Rogers'. 
Your long familiarity with his poetry tells you the 
melancholy fact that he is no longer young; a 
fact kept out of your mind as far as possible, on a 
personal acquaintance, by the freshness with which 
he enjoys, and the generosity with which he im- 
parts. I have heard him called cynical, and per- 
haps a man of his keen wit may be sometimes over- 
tempted to demonstrate it, as the magnanimous Sal- 
adin was to use the weapon with which he adroitly 
severed a man's head from his body at a single 
stroke. If so, these are the exceptions to the gen- 
eral current of his life, which, I am sure, flows in a 
kindly current. K. told me he met him one winter 
in Paris, where he found him enjoying art like a 
young enthusiast, and knowing every boy's name in 
the street he lived in, and in friendship with them 
all. Does not this speak volumes ? 

He honoured our letters of introduction by com- 
ing immediately to see us, and receiving us as cor- 
dially as if we were old friends. He afterward ex- 
pressed a regret to me that he had not taken that 
morning, before we plunged into engagements, to 
show me Johnson's and Dryden's haunts, the house 



LONDON. 79 

where our Franklin lived, and other classic localities. 
Ah ! this goes to swell my pathetic reiteration of the 
general lament, " I have had my losses !" 

His manners are those of a man of the world (in 
its best sense), simple and natural, without any ap- 
parent consciousness of name or fame to support. 
His house, as all the civilized world knows, is a 
cabinet of art, selected and arranged with consum- 
mate taste. The house itself is small ; not, I should 
think, more than twenty-five feet front, and perhaps 
forty deep, in a most fortunate location, overlooking 
the Green Park. The first sight of it from the win- 
dows produces a sort of coup-de-theatre, for you ap- 
proach the house and enter it by a narrow street. 
Every inch of it is appropriated to some rare treas- 
ure or choice production of art. Besides the pic- 
tures (and " What," you might be tempted to ask, 
" can a man want besides such pictures ?") are Etrus- 
can vases (antiques), Egyptian antiquities, casts of 
the Elgin marbles decorating the staircase wall, and 
endless adornments of this nature. There are curi- 
osities of another species, rare books, such as a most 
beautifully -illuminated missal, exquisitely - delicate 
paintings, designed for marginal decorations, execu- 
ted three hundred years ago, and taken from the Vat- 
ican by the French — glorious robbers ! In a cata- 
logue of his books, in the poet's own beautiful auto- 
graph, there were inserted some whimsical titles of 
books, such as " Nebuchadnezzar on Grasses." 

But the most interesting thing in all the col- 
lection was the original document, with Milton's 



80 LONDON. 

name, by which he transferred to his publisher for 
ten pounds the copyright of Paradise Lost.* Next 
in interest to this was a portfolio, in which were 
arranged autograph letters from Pope and Dry- 
den, Washington and Franklin, and several from 
Fox, Sheridan, and Scott, addressed to the poet 
himself. Among them was that written by Sheridan 
just before his death, describing the extremity of his 
suffering, and praying Rogers to come to him. But 
I must check myself. A catalogue raisonnee of 
what our eyes but glanced over would fill folios. 
I had the pleasure at breakfast of sitting next Mr. 
Babbage, whose name is so well known among us 
as the author of the self-calculating machine. He 
has a most remarkable eye, that looks as if it might 
penetrate science or anything else he chose to look 
into. He described the iron steamer now building, 
which has a larger tonnage than any merchant ship 
in the world, and expressed an opinion that iron 
ships would supersede all others; and another opin- 
ion that much concerns us, and which, I trust, may 
soon be verified — that in a few years these iron 
steamers will go to America in seven days ! 

Macauley was of the party. His conversation re- 
sembles his writings ; it is rich and delightful, filled 

* We were the next morning, after breakfasting with Mr. R., in 
the presence of Carlyle speaking of this deed of sale and of Tagli- 
oni. He amused himself and us with calculating how many Para- 
dise Losts she might pay for with a single night's earnings; and, 
after laughing at this picturesque juxtaposition of Milton and Tagli- 
oni, he added seriously, " But there have been better things on earth 
than Paradise Lost that have received worse payment; that have 
been paid with the scaffold and the cross!" 



LONDON. 81 

with anecdotes and illustrations from the abounding 
stores of his overflowing mind. Some may think he 
talks too much; but none, except from their own 
impatient vanity, could wish it were less. 

It was either at Mr. Rogers', or at a breakfast a 
few days after at Mr. R.'s sister's (whose house, by- 
the-way, is a fair pendant for his), that we had 
much Monkbarn's humour, from worthy disciples of 
that king of old bachelors, on the subject of mat- 
rimony. H. said there had been many a time in his 
life when he should have married, if he could some 
fine day have walked quietly into a village-church, 
and met at the altar a lady having come as quietly 
into another door, and then, after the marriage ser- 
vice, each have departed their separate way, with 
no observation, no speculation upon the engagement, 
no congratulations before or after. Rogers, who 
seems resolved to win the crown of celibiat martyr- 
dom (is there a crown for it ?), pronounced matri- 
mony a folly at any period of life, and quoted a say- 
ing of some wicked Benedict, that, "no matter 
whom you married, you would find afterward you 
had married another person." 

No doubt ; but, except with the idealizing lover, 
I believe the expectation is as often surpassed as 
disappointed. There is a generous opinion for a 
single woman of your married fortunes ! 



82 LONDON. 

I believe, of all* my pleasures here, dear J. will 
most envy me that of seeing Joanna Baillie, and of 
seeing her repeatedly at her own home : the best point 
of view for all best women. She lives on Hempstead 
Hill, a few miles from town, in a modest house, with 
Miss Agnes Baillie, her only sister, a most kindly 
and agreeable person. Miss Baillie — I write this for 
J., for we women always like to know how one an- 
other look and dress — Miss Baillie has a well-pre- 
served appearance; her face has nothing of the 
vexed or sorrowing expression that is often so deep- 
ly stamped by a long experience of life. It indicates 
a strong mind, great sensibility, and the benevolence 
that, I believe, always proceeds from it if the men- 
tal constitution be a sound one, as it eminently is in 
Miss Baillie's case. She has a pleasing figure — 
what we call lady-like — that is, delicate, erect, and 
graceful ; not the large-boned, muscular frame of 
most Englishwomen. She wears her own gray 
hair : a general fashion, by-the-way, here, which I 
wish we elderly ladies of America may have the 
courage and the taste to imitate ; and she wears the 
prettiest of brown silk gowns and bonnets fitting the 
beau ideal of an old lady : an ideal she might in- 
spire if it has no pre-existence. You would, of 
course, expect her to be, as she is, free from pedantry 
and all modes of affectation ; but I think you would 
be surprised to find yourself forgetting, in a domestic 
and confiding feeling, that you were talking with 
the woman whose name is best established among 



LONDON. 83 

the female writers of her country ; in short, forgetting 
everything but that you were in the society of a 
most charming private gentlewoman. She might 
(would that all female writers could !) take for her 
device a flower that closes itself against the noontide 
sun, and unfolds in the evening shadows.* 

We lunched with Miss Baillie. Mr. Tytler the . 
historian and his sister were present. Lord Wood- 
houselie, the intimate friend of Scott, was their fa- 
ther. Joanna Baillie appears to us, from Scott's let- 
ters to her, to have been his favourite friend ; and the 
conversation among so many personally familiar with 
him naturally turned upon him, and many a pleasant 
anecdote was told, many a thrilling word quoted. 

It was pleasant to hear these friends of Scott 
and Mackenzie talk of them as familiarly as we 
speak of W., B., and other household friends. They 
all agreed in describing Mackenzie as a jovial, 
hearty sort of person, without any indication in his 
manners and conversation of the exquisite sentiment 
he infused into his writings. One of the party re- 
membered his coming home one day in great glee 
from a cockfight, and his wife saying to him, " Oh, 
Harry, Harry, you put all your feelings on paper !" 

* In the United States Mrs. Barbauld would perhaps divide the suf- 
frages with Miss Baillie ; but in England, as far as my limited obser- 
vation extended, she is not rated so high or so generally read as here. 
She has experienced the great disadvantage of being considered the 
organ of a sect. Does noc the " Address to the Deity" and the 
" Evening's Meditation" rank with the best English poetry? and are . 
not her essays, that on " Prejudice" and that on the "Inconsisten- 
cy of Human Expectations," unsurpassed? 



84 LONDON. 

I was glad to hear Miss Baillie, who is an intimate 
friend of Lady Byron, speak of her with tender rev- 
erence, and of her conjugal infelicity as not at all 
the result of any quality or deficiency on her part, but 
inevitable.* Strange this is not the universal im- 
pression, after Byron's own declaration to Moore that 
" there never was a better or even a brighter, a kinder 
or a more amiable and agreeable being than Lady B." 

After lunch we walked over to a villa occupied 
by Miss Baillie's nephew, the only son of Dr. Bail- 
lie. It commands a view almost as beautiful and 
as English as that from Richmond Hill ; a view ex- 
tending far — far over wide valleys and gently-swell- 
ing hills, all standing thick with corn. Returning, 
we went to a point on Hampstead Hill overlooking 
the pretty " vale of 'ealth," as our coachman calls 
it, and which has been to us the vale of hospitality 
and most homelike welcome. This elevation, Miss 
B. told me, was equal to that of the ball on the dome 
of St. Paul's. We could just discern the dome pen- 
etrating far into the canopy of smoke that over- 
hangs all London. Miss B. says Scott delighted in 

* I should not have presumed, by a public mention of Lady Byron, 
to have penetrated the intrenchments of feminine delicacy and re- 
serve which she has with such dignity maintained, but for the de- 
sire, as far as in my humble sphere I might do it, to correct the im- 
pression so prevailing among the readers of Moore's biography in 
this country, that Lady B. is one of those most unlovely of women 
who, finding it very easy to preserve a perpendicular line, have no 
sufferance for the deviations of others, no aptitude, no flexibility. 
How different this image from the tender, compassionate, loveable 
reality ! the devoted mother, the trusted friend, the benefactress of 
poor children. 



LONDON. 85 

this view. It is melancholy, portentous, better suited, 
I should think, to the genius of Byron. I have seen 
sublime sights in my life, a midnight thunder-storm at 
Niagara and a " gallant breeze" on the seashore, but 
I never saw so spirit-stirring a spectacle as this im- 
mense city with its indefinite boundaries and its dull 
light. Here are nearly two millions of human be- 
ings, with their projects, pursuits, hopes, and despairs, 
their strifes, friendships, and rivalries, their loves and 
hates, their joys and anguish, some steeped to the 
lips in poverty, others encumbered with riches, some 
treading on the confines of Heaven, others in the 
abysses of sin, and all sealed with the seal of im- 
mortality. 



The dinner-hour in London, my dear C, is from 
six to eight. I think we have received no invitation 
later than for half past seven. You know the Lon- 
don — the English world, is divided into castes, and 
our letters have obtained access for us to families 
that never come together here in social life. We 
have dined with the suburban gentry, people who, 
enjoying an income of as many pounds as our coun- 
try gentleman has dollars, give you a family-dinner 
of two or three dishes with some simple dessert. 
For such a dinner, one of our country ladies would 
be apt to make an apology ; the mortifying truth is, 
that hospitality does not run so much into eating and 
drinking here, as with us. Everything is of the 
best quality and served in the best manner, but there 

Vol. I.— H 



86 LONDON. 

is no overloading. Without exaggeration, I believe 
that the viands for a rich merchant's dinner-party in 
New-York would suffice for any half dozen tables 
I have seen here; and I am not sure that the 
supper-table at S.'s ball, just before I left New- 
York, would not have supplied the evening parties 
of a London season. The young men there drank 
more Champagne than I have seen in London. May 
we not hope that in three or four seasons we may 
adopt these refinements of civilization'? No, not 
adopt these precisely. The modes of one coun- 
try are not transferable, without modification, to an- 
other. A people who dine at three or four o'clock 
need some more substantial refection at ten than a 
cup of black tea ; but they do not need a lord-may- 
or's feast, than which nothing can be more essential- 
ly vulgar. 

I told you, my dear C, that I was going to dine 
at L — i— house. I went, and I honestly confess to 
you that, when I drove up the approach to this great 
lord's magnificent mansion, I felt the foolish trepida- 
tion I remember to have suffered when, just having 
emerged from our sequestered country home, I first 
went to a dinner-party in town. I was alone. I 
.dreaded conventional forms of which I might be ig- 
norant, and still more the insolent observation to 
which, as a stranger and an American, I might be 
exposed. But these foolish fears were dissipated by 
the recollection of the agreeable half hour I had al- 
ready passed with Lord L., when I had quite forgot- 
ten that he had a lordship tacked to his name, or 



LONDON. 87 

that he was anything but a plain, highly-informed 
gentleman.* I felt, too, that an unpretending woman 
is always safe in her simplicity ; and when I alight- 
ed and was received by half a dozen servants in 
white and crimson liveries, and announced through 
magnificent apartments, I felt no more embarrass- 
ment than, as a passably modest woman, I should 
have done in entering alone a gentleman's house in 
New- York. Lady L. has an air of birth and breed- 
ing, and still much beauty, not merely " the remains" 
of beauty, for so we always speak of a woman past 
forty. Lady L. was courteous, not condescending, 
the least acceptable grace of those who stand on a 
higher level than their associates, since it betrays the 
consciousness of elevation. There were several per- 
sons in the drawing-room to whom I had before been 
introduced, and I soon forgot that I was a stranger. 
The modes of English life are identically our own, 
and there was nothing to remind me I was not at 
home, save more superb apartments, a larger train of 
servants and in livery, a dinner-service all of plate, 
and those most covetable luxuries, first-rate pictures 
and sculpture. I perceived nothing of the studied 
stillness we have heard alleged of English society. 



* I have heard that an Englishman, on being asked what struck, 
him most in Americans, replied, "their d — d free and easy man- 
ners." There was some truth with much coarseness in this. An 
American, bred in the best society in his own land, does not feel any 
more than he acknowledges superiority of rank in another. The 
distinctions of rank are as vague and imperceptible to him as the 
imaginary lines are to the puzzled child in his first studies on the 
globe. 



88 LONDON. 

Everything was natural and easy. Lord L. laughed 
as heartily as T. does, and M. talked to me across 
the table. 

My dinner the next day was far more trying in 
its circumstances than that at L house. Acci- 
dent had prevented my seeing the lady who invited 
me. I unwarily accepted the invitation ; for, till you 
have passed the threshold of acquaintance, it is very 
awkward to plunge into a dinner-party. My invi- 
tations had usually been at seven. I had carelessly 

forgotten the hour named in Mrs. 's note, and 

we concluded it was safest to take the average hour. 
The distance was three miles from Halfmoon- 
street, longer than I supposed ; our dawdling coach- 
man drove slower than usual; and all the while I 
was tormenting myself with the fear I might be too 

late, and that Mrs. was thinking what a bore 

it was to be compelled to civility to a blundering 
stranger. To put the last drop in my brimming 
cup of vexation, the coachman made a mistake, and 
had twice to drive round a large square ; and when 
I finally arrived I was ushered into an empty room 
— " portentous !" thought I. The gentleman of the 
house entered, and, disconcerted at my awkward po- 
sition, and humanely hoping to help me out of it, he 
said, stammering, " There is some mistake !" " Heav- 
ens, yes !" I groaned, inwardly. " Our invitation," 
he continued, " mentioned six as our dinner hour. 
We waited till seven, and it is now past" (past ! it 
was nearly eight) — " you can do as you please about 
going in I" I looked to the window — the carriage 



LONDON. 89 

was gone ; my ear caught the last faint sound of its 
receding wheels. There was no escape. A hen, 
the most timid of breathing things, is courageous 
when there is no alternative but " to do or die," and 
so was I. I begged ten thousand pardons, assured 
Mr. that the dinner was a perfectly unimpor- 
tant circumstance to me ; that I would not lose the 

only opportunity I might have of seeing Mrs. , 

&c. So, with a dim smile, he gave me his arm, and 
I entered the dining-room. There were ten or twelve 
people present. There was an awful silence, an ob- 
vious suspension of the whole ceremony of dinner 
awaiting my decision. My courage was expended ; I 
felt it ebbing, when H., who was sitting next the lady 
of the house, came to my relief, both hands extend- 
ed, as if to save a drowning creature. He is, as I 
have told you before, the very imbodiment of the 
kindly social principle. He stopped my apologies 
by assuming that I was the injured party, and dealt 
his blows to our host and hostess on the right and 

left. He declared that Mrs. wrote a hand no 

one could decipher. He never, in a long acquaint- 
ance, had made out a note of hers, and he was sure 
I had not been able to tell whether I was invited at 
six or eight ! He would know " how had re- 
ceived me." He was certain " he had made some 
blunder, it was so like him !" I answered, with 
strict truth, that Mr. " had made me feel com- 
fortable in a most uncomfortable position." To my 
dismay, and in spite of my protestations, Mrs. — — 
insisted on re-beginning at the Alpha of the dinner $ 

112 



90 LONDON. 

the guests had reached the Omega. The soup was 
brought back. H. averred that it was most fortu- 
nate for him; he had been kept talking, and had 
not eaten half a dinner; so he started fresh with 
me, and went bona fide through, covering me with 
his aegis as I run my gauntlet through the courses. 
The age of chivalry is not past. Match this deed 
of courtesy, if you can, from the lives of the preux 
chevaliers, taken from their sunrising to their sunset- 
ting. This dinner, like many other things in life, 
was bitter in its experience and sweet in its remem- 
brance. 

Our pleasantest dinner, I think, was at K.'s ; he 
who gave us " the ticket for six" to his breakfast. 
I knew him before coming here as the friend of 
many of our friends, and the author of very charm- 
ing published poetry. He seems to me the personi- 
fication of the English gentleman of Addison's time, 
" a heart of gold." I do not know that he is cele- 
brated for wit, but I have heard more clever things 
from him than from any one else in London. No, it 
is not wit ; in that I think there is a drop — it may 
not be more, but a drop — a tang of bitterness ; but 
wit's innocent, sportive, and most lovely child, hu- 
mour — the infant Bacchus among the higher divini- 
ties. K.'s manners are those of a man who has all 
the world's conventionalities at his command, and 
yet whose nature is too strong for them, so that the 
stream of humanity comes gushing fresh from its 
fountain, without heeding the prescribed channels, 
watermarks, and barriers that custom and fashion 



LONDON. 91 

have decreed.* The enjoyment of an agreeable, 
well-bred society is something like passing over a 
good road through a well-ordered country : de- 
lightful in the passage, but no overturns to be re- 
membered. And so I remember nothing of K.'s 
dinner but that I sat opposite to his picture, which 
the painter has, in spite of the original's superb 
head and intellectual eye, made to look so of 
the earth earthy, that some one said to him, " You 
should not let that picture hang there : it makes one 
doubt the immortality of the soul ;" and that I sat 
next Proctor. He is so well known to you as " Bar- 
ry Cornwall," that you have perhaps forgotten that 
is merely his nom-de-guerre. He was one of the 
intimate friends of Charles Lamb, and spoke of him 
in just the way that we, who look upon him with 
something of the tenderness that we do upon the 
departed members of our own household, would 
like to hear him spoken of. Proctor made inquiries 
about the diffusion of English literature in Amer- 
ica, and showed a modest surprise at hearing how 
well he was known among us. 

* I have hesitated whether to transcribe the above passage from 
my private journal. Its transcription is a slight infringement of the 
rule I have prescribed to myself. The gentleman in question was 
our companion and friend on the Continent, and besides that leav- 
ing him out would be leaving out of our travelling web the golden 
thread, it pleased — my vanity, it may be— to prove how, on the very 
threshold of his acquaintance, we discerned the treasures within. 



92 LONDON. 

My dear C, 
I may say that we have scaled the ladder of even- 
ing entertainments here, going from a six o'clock 

family tea up to a magnificent concert at L • 

house ; and the tea at this home-like hour was at Car- 
lyle's. He is living in the suburbs of London, near the 
Thames ; my impression is, in rather an humble way ; 
but when your eye is filled with a grand and beau- 
tiful temple, you do not take the dimensions of sur- 
rounding objects ; and if any man can be independ- 
ent of them, you might expect Carlyle to be. His 
head would throw a phrenologist into ecstasies. It 
looks like the " forge of thought " it is ; and his eyes 
have a preternatural brilliancy. He reminded me 
of what Lockhart said to me, speaking of the size 
of Webster's head, that he " had brains enough to 
fill half a dozen hats." Carlyle has as strong a 
Scotch accent as Mr. Combe. His manner is sim- 
ple, natural, and kindly. His conversation has the 
picturesqueness of his writings, and flows as natu- 
rally, and as free from Germanism, as his own 
mountain streams are from any infusion of German 
soil. He gave us an interesting account of his first 

acquaintance with E n. He was living with his 

wife in a most secluded part of Scotland. They had 
no neighbours, no communication with the world, ex- 
cepting once a week or fortnight, when he went some 
miles to a postoffice in the hope of a letter or some 
other intimation that the world was going on. One 
day a stranger came to them — a young American — 



LONDON. 93 

and " he seemed to them an angel." They spoke of 
him as if they had never lost their first impression of 
his celestial nature. Carlyle had met Mr. Webster, 
and expressed a humorous surprise that a man from 
over the sea should talk English, and be as familiar as 
the natives with the English constitution and laws, 

" With all that priest or jurist saith, 
Of modes of law, or modes of faith." 

He said Webster's eyes were like dull furnaces, 
that only wanted blowing on to lighten them up. 
And, by-the-way, it is quite interesting to perceive 
that our great countryman has made a sensation 
here, where it is all but as difficult to make one as 
to make a mark on the ocean. They have given 
him the soubriquet of " the Great Western," and 
they seem particularly struck with his appearance. 
A gentleman said to me, " His eyes open, and open, 
and open, and you think they will never stop open- 
ing ;" and a painter was heard to exclaim, on see- 
ing him, " What a head ! what eyes ! what a mouth ! 
and, my God ! w T hat colouring !" 

We had a very amusing evening at Mr. Hallam's, 
whom (thanks to F., as thanks to her for all my best 
privileges in London) I have had the great pleasure 
of seeing two or three times. But this kind of see- 
ing is so brief and imperfect that it amounts to little 
more than seeing the pictures of these great people. 
Mr. Hallam has a very pleasing countenance, and a 
most good-humoured and playful manner. I quite 
forgot he was the sage of the " Middle Ages." He 
reminded me of ; but his simplicity is more 



94 LONDON. 

genuine ; not at all that of the great man trying to 
play child. You quite forget, in the freedom and 
ease of the social man, that he is ever the hero in 
armour. We met Sidney Smith at his house, the 
best known of all the wits of the civilized world. 
The company was small ; he was i' the vein, which is 
like a singer being in voice, and we saw him, I be- 
lieve, to advantage. His wit was not, as I expect- 
ed, a succession of brilliant explosions, but a spark- 
ling stream of humour, very like when he is at 

home, and i' the vein too; and, like him also, he 
seemed to enjoy his own fun, and to have fattened 
on it * 

He expressed unqualified admiration of Dickens, 
and said that 10,000 of each number of Nicholas 
Nickleby was sold. There was a young man pres- 
ent, who, being flushed with some recent literary 
success, ventured to throw himself into the arena 
against this old lion-king, and, to a lover of such 
sport, it would have been pleasant to see how he 
crackled him up, flesh, bones, and all. 



The concert at L house was in a superb gal- 
lery of sculpture, with a carved and gilded ceiling, 
and other appropriate and splendid accompaniments. 
I am told that it is one of the choicest collection of 



* I have had the grace here, after transcribing and retranscribing 
them, to suppress some fresh bon mots of Sidney Smith's on recent 
works of popular authors being spoken of. Grace it is, knowing how 
much more acceptable to readers are bon mots than descriptions. 



LONDON. 95 

antiques in the Kingdom, but I had no opportunity 
of judging or enjoying, for the marble divinities 
were hidden by the glittering mortals. When K. 
and I entered, the apartments were filled with some 
hundreds of people of the first station and fashion in 
the land, luxuriously dressed and sparkling with dia- 
monds, a sea of faces as strange as their diamonds 
to me. It was an overpowering kind of solitude. 
Lady L. had politely directed me to a favourable po- 
sition, and I slunk into the first vacant place I could 
find, where I was beginning to feel quite comfortable 
in my obscurity, when K. said to me, with something 
of the feeling of Columbus' men when they first 

cried "land !" "there is Mr. and Mr. !" 

These gentlemen soon after made their way to us, 
and dissipated our forlornness. In the course of the 
evening we met many agreeable persons to whom 
we had been before introduced, and several of the 
most noted lions of the London menagerie were 
pointed out to us, Bulwer, Taylor, and Talfourd. 
Lady Seymour was there, a superb beauty certainly, 
and well entitled to the elective crown she is to 
wear, of Queen of Love and Beauty. I was intro- 
duced to Mrs. Norton, who is herself a most queen- 
ly-looking creature, a Semiramis, a Sappho, or an 
Amazon (the Greek ideal Amazon, remember, uni- 
ting masculine force with feminine delicacy, or any- 
thing that expresses the perfection of intellectual 
and physical beauty). There is another of these 
Sheridan sisters celebrated for her personal charms. 
I had read but a few mornings before, as I mentioned 



96 LONDON. 

to you, that miserable deathbed letter from their 
pennyless grandfather, and I was somewhat struck 
with the shifting scenes of life when I saw these 
women occupying the most brilliant position of the 
most brilliant circle in London. But what are gold 
and lands to the rich inheritance of Sheridan's ge- 
nius and Miss Linley's beauty 1 

It is indeed a royal entertainment to give one's 
guests such singing as Grisi's, Garcia's, Lablache's, 
and Rubini's, and can, I suppose, only be given by 
those who have " royal revenues."* 



We passed an evening at Miss C.'s ; she is truly 
what the English call a " nice person," as mod- 
est in her demeanour as one of our village girls 
who has a good organ of veneration (rare enough 
among our young people), and this is saying some- 
thing for the richest heiress in England. I was first 
struck here, and only here, with the subdued tone 
we hear so much of in English society. When 
we first entered Miss C.'s immense drawing-room, 
there were a few dowagers scattered up and down, 
appearing as few and far between as settlers on a 

* I think one of our parties must strike an Englishman like a nur- 
sery-ball. Even in this immense assembly at L. house I saw few 
young people, none extremely young ; but I must confess the tout en- 
semble struck me as very superior in physical condition and beauty to 
a similar assembly with us. Our girl, with her delicate features and 
nymph -like figure, is far more lovely in her first freshness than the 
English; but the English woman, in her ripeness and full devel- 
opment, far surpasses ours. She is superb from twenty to forty- 
five. 



LONDON. 97 

prairie, and apparently rinding intercommunication 
quite as difficult. And though the numbers soon 
multiplied, till the gentlemen came genial from the 
dinner-table, we were as solemn and as still as a 
New-England conference-meeting before the min- 
ister comes in. This, I think, was rather the effect 
of accident than fashion, the young lady's quiet and 
reserved manner having the subduing influence of 
a whisper. Society here is quieter than ours cer- 
tainly. This is perhaps the result of the different 
materials of which it is compounded. Our New- 
York evening-parties, you know, are made up of 
about seventy-five parts boys and girls, the other 
twenty-five being their papas and mammas, and oth- 
er ripe men and women. The spirits of a mass of 
young people, even if they be essentially well-bred, 
will explode in sound ; thence the general din of 
voices and shouts of laughter at our parties. 

I have rarely seen at an evening-party here any- 
thing beyond a cup of black tea and a bit of cake 
dry as " the remainder biscuit after a voyage." Occa- 
sionally we have ices (in alarmingly small quantity !) 

and lemonade, or something of that sort. At L 

house there was a refreshment-table spread for three 
or four hundred people, much like Miss D.'s at 
her New-York soirees, which, you may remember, 
was considered quite a sumptuary phenomenon. I 
am thus particular to reiterate to you, dear C, that 
the English have got so far in civilization as not to 
deem eating and drinking necessary to the enjoy- 

VOL. I.— I 



98 LONDON. 

ment of society. We are a transition people, and I 
hope we shall not lag far behind them. 

I have met many persons here whom to meet was 
like seeing the originals of familiar pictures. Jane 
Porter, Mrs. Opie, Mrs. Austen, Lockhart, Milman, 
Sir Francis Chantry, &c* I owed Mrs. Opie a 
grudge for having made me, in my youth, cry my 
eyes out over her stories ; but her fair, cheerful face 
forced me to forget it. She long ago forswore the 
world and its vanities, and adopted the Quaker 
faith and costume ; but I fancied that her elaborate 
simplicity, and the fashionable little train to her 
pretty satin gown, indicated how much easier it is to 
adopt a theory than to change one's habits. Mrs. 
Austen stands high here for personal character, as 
well as for the very inferior but undisputed property 
of literary accomplishments. Her translations are 
so excellent that they class her with good original 
writers. If her manners were not strikingly conven- 
tional, she would constantly remind me of ; she 

has the same Madame Roland order of architecture 



* Some of my readers may be surprised to miss from the list of 
these eminent persons the names of the two female writers most 
read in the United States, Miss Martineau and Mrs. Jameson. Miss 
Martineau was on the Continent when I was in London, and in speak- 
ing of Mrs. Jameson in this public way would seem to me much like 
putting the picture of an intimate and dear friend into an exhibition- 
room. Besides, her rare gifts, attainments, and the almost unequal- 
led richness and charm of her conversation are well known in this 
country. But with all these a woman may be, after all,but a kind of 
monster ; how far they are transcended by the virtues and attractions 
of her domestic life, it was our happiness to know from seeing her 
daily in her English home. 



LONDON. 99 

and outline, but she wants her charm of naturalness 
and attractive sweetness ; so it may not seem to Mrs. 
A.'s sisters and fond friends. A company attitude 
is rarely anybody's best. 

There is a most pleasing frankness and social 
charm in Sir Francis Chantry's manner. I called 
him repeatedly Mr. Chantry, and begged him to 
pardon me on the ground of not being "native to 
the manner." He laughed good-naturedly, and said 
something of having been longer accustomed to the 
plebeian designation. I heard from Mr. R. a much 
stronger illustration than this of this celebrated ar- 
tist's good sense and good feeling too. Chantry 
was breakfasting with Mr. R., when, pointing to 
some carving in wood, he asked R. if he remember- 
ed that, some twenty years before, he employed a 
young man to do that work for him. R. had but 
an indistinct recollection. " I was that young man," 
resumed Chantry, " and very glad to get the five 
shillings a day you paid me !" Mr. B. told a pen- 
dant to this pretty story. Mr. B. was discussing with 
Sir Francis the propriety of gilding something, I for- 
get what. B. was sure it could be done, Chantry 
as sure it could not ; and " I should know," he said, 
" for I was once apprenticed to a carver and gilder." 
Perhaps, after all, it is not so crowning a grace in 
Sir Francis Chantry to refer to the obscure morning 
of his brilliant day, as it is a disgrace to the paltry 
world that it should be so considered. 

I have seen Owen of Lanark, a curiosity rather 
from the sensation he at one time produced in our 



100 LONDON. 

country, than from anything very extraordinary in 
the man. He is pushing his theories with unabated 
zeal. He wasted an hour in trying to convince me 
that he could make the world over and " set all to 
rights," if he were permitted to substitute two or 
three truths for two or three prevailing errors ; and 
on the same morning a philanthropical phrenologist 
endeavoured to show me how, if his theory were es- 
tablished, the world would soon become healthy, 
wealthy, and wise. Both believe the good work is 
going on — happy men! So it has always been; 
there must be some philosopher's stone, some short- 
hand process, rather than the slow way of education 
and religious discipline which, to us, Providence 
seems to have ordained. 



You w T ill perhaps like to know, my dear C, more 
definitely than you can get them from these few an- 
ecdotes of my month in London, what impressions I 
have received here; and I will give them fairly to 
you, premising that I am fully aware how imperfect 
they are, and how false some of them may be. 
Travellers should be forgiven their monstrous errors 
when we find there are so few on whose sound judg- 
ments we can rely, of the character of their own 
people and the institutions of their own country. 

In the first place, I have been struck with the 
identity of the English and the New-England char- 
acter — the strong family likeness. The oak-tree 
may be our emblem, modified, but never changed by 



LONDON. 101 

circumstances. Cultivation may give it a more 
graceful form and polish, and brighten its leaves, or 
it may shoot up more rapidly and vigorously in a 
new soil ; but it is always the oak, with its strength, 
inflexibility, and " nodosities." 

With my strong American feelings, and my love 
of home so excited that my nerves were all on the 
outside, I was a good deal shocked to find how very 
little interest was felt about America in the circles I 
chanced to be in. The truth is, w r e are so far off, 
we have so little apparent influence on the political 
machinery of Europe, such slight relations with the 
literary world, and none with that of art and fashion, 
that, except to the philosopher, the man of science, 
and the manufacturing and labouring classes, Amer- 
ica is yet an undiscovered country, as distant and as 
dim as — Heaven. It is not, perhaps, to be wondered 
at. There are new and exciting events every day 
at their own doors, and there are accumulations of 
interests in Europe to occupy a lifetime, and there 
are few anywhere who can abide Johnson's test 
when he says that, " whatever withdraws us from 
the power of our senses ; whatever makes the past, 
the distant, or the future predominate over the pres- 
ent, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings." 
Inquiries are often put to me about my country, 
and I laugh at my own eagerness to impart knowl- 
edge and exalt their ideas of us, when I perceive 
my hearers listening with the forced interest of a cour- 
teous person to a teller of dreams. 

One evening, in a circle of eminent people, the 

12 



102 LONDON. 

question was started, " what country came next in 
their affections to England?" I listened, in my 
greenness expecting to hear one and all say " Amer- 
ica;" no, not one feeble voice uttered the name. 
Mrs. , with her hot love of art, naturally an- 
swered, " Italy is first to us all." " Oh, no," replied 
two or three voices, " England first, and next — Ger- 
many." " England first," said Mrs. A., " Germany 
next, and I think my third country is — Malta !" I 
thought of my own land, planted from the English 
stock, where the productions of these very speakers 
are most widely circulated, and, if destined to live, 
must have their longest life ; the land where • the 
most thorough and hopeful experiment of the capa- 
city of the human race for knowledge, virtue, hap- 
piness, and self-government is now making ; the 
land of promise and protection to the poor and dis- 
heartened of every country ; and it seemed to me it 
should have superseded in their affections countries 
comparatively foreign to them. 

I have seen instances of ignorance of us in quarters 
where you would scarcely expect it ; for example, a 
very cultivated man, a bishop, asked K. if there were 
a theatre in America ! and a person of equal dignity 
inquired " if the society of Friends was not the pre- 
vailing religious sect in Boston !" A literary man 
of some distinction asked me if the Edinburgh and 
Quarterly Reviews were read in America ; and one 
of the cultivated women of England said to me, in 
a soothing tone, on my expressing admiration of 
English trees, " Oh, you will have such in time, when 



LONDON. 103 

your forests are cut down, and they have room for 
their limbs to spread." I smiled and was silent; 
but if I saw in vision our graceful, drooping, elm- 
embowering roods of ground, and, as I looked at the 
stiff, upright English elm, had something of the phari- 
saical " holier than thou" flit over my mind, I may 
be forgiven. 

I was walking one day with some young English- 
women, when a short, sallow, broad man, to whom 
Nature had been niggardly, to say the least of it, 
passed us. " I think," said I, " that is a countryman 
of mine ; I have seen him in New- York." " I took 
him for an American," said one of my companions, 
with perfect nonchalance. " Pray tell me why." 
"He looks so like the pictures in Mrs. Trollope's 
book !" It is true, this was a secluded young per- 
son in a provincial town, but I felt mortified that in 
one fair young mind Mrs. Trollope's vulgar carica- 
tures should stand as the type of my countrymen. 

I have heard persons repeatedly expressing a de- 
sire to visit America — for what ? " To see a prai- 
rie" — " to see Niagara" — " to witness the manner of 
the help to their employers ; it must be so very com- 
ical !" but, above all, " to eat canvass-back ducks!" 
The canvass-backs are in the vision of America 
what St. Peter's is in the view of Rome. But pa- 
tience, my dear C. In the first place, it matters lit- 
tle what such thinkers think of us ; and then things 
are mending. The steamers have already cancelled 
half the distance between the two continents. The 
two worlds are daily weaving more closely their 



104 LONDON. 

interests and their friendships. I have been de- 
lighted with the high admiration expressed here in 
all quarters of Dr. Channing, and, above all, to 
find that his pure religion has, with its angel's 
wings, surmounted the walls of sectarianism. I 
have heard him spoken of with enthusiasm by pre- 
lates as much distinguished for their religious zeal as 
for their station. Prescott's History is spoken of in 
terms of unqualified praise. I have known but one 
exception. A reviewer, a hyperergic "dyed in the 

wool," sat next me at Mrs. 's dinner. He said 

Mr. Prescott must not hope to pass the English 
custom-house unless he wrote purer English, and 
he adduced several words which I have forgotten. 
I ventured to say that new words sprung out of 
new combinations of circumstances;* that, for ex- 
ample, the French revolution had created many 
words. " Yes," he replied, " and American words 
may do for America ; but America is in relation to 
England a province. England must give the law 
to readers and writers of English." After some 
other flippant criticisms, he ended with saying that 
the History of Ferdinand and Isabella was one of 
the best extant, and that Mr. Prescott had exhaust- 
ed the subject. 

* I was struck with the different views that are taken of the same 
subject in different positions, when afterward, in a conversation with 
the celebrated Manzoni, he asked me if America, in emancipating 
herself from political dependance, had also obtained intellectual 
freedom ; if, unenslaved by the classic models of England, we ven- 
ture to modify the language, and to use such new phrases and words 
as naturally sprung from new circumstances. 



LONDON. 105 

He said, what was quite true before the habits of 
colonial deference had passed away, but is no lon- 
ger, " that an American book has no reputation in 
America till it is stamped with English authority, 
and then it goes off edition after edition." He ut- 
tered sundry other impertinences ; but, as he seemed 
good-natured and unconscious that they were so, I 
sat them down to the account of individual igno- 
rance and prejudice, not to nationality, which has 
too often to answer for private sins. 

Society, as I have before told you, has the same 
general features here as with us. The w T omen have 
the same time-wasting mode of making morning vis- 
its, which is even more consuming than with us, in- 
asmuch as the distances are greater. What would 

Mrs. do in London, who thought it reason 

enough for removing from New-York to the country, 
that she had to spend one morning of every week in 
driving about town to leave visiting-cards 1 One 
would think that the proposition which circulates as 
undeniable truth, that time is the most valuable of 
possessions, would prevent this lavish expenditure. 
But it is not a truth. Nothing is less valuable to nine 
tenths of mere society people, or less valued by them, 
than time. The only thing they earnestly try to do 
is to get rid of it. 

I have seen nothing here to change my opinion 
that there is something in the Anglo-Saxon race es- 
sentially adverse to the spirit and grace of society. 
I have seen more invention, spirit, and ease in one 
soiree in a German family at New-York, than I have 



106 . LONDON. 

ever seen here, or should see in a season in purely- 
American society. An Englishman has an uncom- 
fortable consciousness of the presence and observa- 
tion of others ; an immense love of approbation, with 
either a shyness or a defiance of opinion. 

Thoroughly well-bred people are essentially the 
same everywhere. You will find much more con- 
ventional breeding here than with us, and, of course, 
the general level of manners is higher and the sur- 
face more uniform. 

" Society is smoothed to that excess, 
That manners differ hardly more than dress." 

They are more quiet, and I should say there was less 
individuality, but from a corresponding remark hav- 
ing been made by English travellers among us. I 
take it the impression results from the very slight 
revelations of character that are made on a transient 
acquaintance. There is much more variety and 
richness in conversation here, resulting naturally from 
more leisure and higher cultivation. But, after all, 
there seems to me to be a great defect in conversa- 
tion. The feast of wit and reason it may be, but it 
is not the flow and mingling of soul. The French- 
man, instructed by his amour propre, said truly, " tout 
le monde aime planter son mot."* Conversation 
seems here to be a great arena, where each speaker 
is a gladiator who must take his turn, put forth his 
strength, and give place to his successor. Each one 
is on the watch to seize his opportunity, show his 
power, and disappear before his vanity is wounded 
* " Every man likes to put in his word." 



LONDON. 1 07 

by an indication that he is in the way. Thus con- 
versation becomes a succession of illuminations and 
triumphs — or failures. There is no such " horreur" 
as a bore ; no such bore as a proser. A bore might 
be denned to be a person that must be listened to. 
I remember R. saying that " kings are always bores, 
and so are royal dukes, for they must not be inter- 
rupted as long as they please to talk." The crown- 
ing grace of conversation, the listening with pleased 
eagerness, I have rarely seen. When Dr. C. was told 
that Coleridge pronounced him the most agreeable 
American he had ever seen, he replied, "Then it 
was because he found me a good listener, for I said 
absolutely nothing !" And yet, as far as we may 
judge from Coleridge's Table-Talk, he would have 
been the gainer by a fairer battle than that where 

" One side only gives and t'other takes the blows." 

A feature in society here that must be striking to 
Americans, is the great number of single women. 
With us, you know, few women live far beyond 
their minority unmated, and those few sink into the 
obscurity of some friendly fireside. But here they 
have an independent existence, pursuits, and influ- 
ence, and they are much happier for it ; mind, I do 
not say happier than fortunate wives and good moth- 
ers, but than those who, not having drawn a hus- 
band in the lottery of life, resign themselves to a 
merely passive existence. Englishwomen, married 
and single, have more leisure and far more opportu- 
nity for intellectual cultivation, than with us. The 



108 LONDON. 

objects of art are on every side of them, exciting 
their minds through their sensations and filling them 
with images of beauty. There is, with us, far more 
necessity, and, of course, opportunity, for the devel- 
opment of a woman's faculties for domestic life, than 
here; but this, I think, is counterbalanced by wom- 
en's necessary independence of the other sex here. 
On the whole, it seems to me there is not a more 
loveable or lovely woman than the American ma- 
tron, steadfast in her conjugal duties, devoted to the 
progress of her children and the happiness of her 
household, nor a more powerful creature than the 
Englishwoman in the full strength and develop- 
ment of her character. 

Now, my dear C, a word as to dress for the wom- 
ankind of your family. I do not comprehend what 
our English friends, who come among us, mean by 
their comments on the extravagance of dress in 
America. I have seen more velvet and costly lace 
in one hour in Kensington Garden than I ever saw 
in New- York ; and it would take all the diamonds 
in the United States to dress a duchess for an even- 
ing at L house. You may say that lace and dia- 
monds are transmitted luxuries, heir-looms (a spe- 
cies of inheritance we know little about) ; still you 
must take into the account the immense excess of 
their wealth over ours, before you can have a no- 
tion of the disparity between us. 

The women here up to five-and-forty (and splen- 
did women many of them are up to that age) dress 
with taste — fitness ; after that, abominably. Worn- 



LONDON. 109 

en to seventy, and Heaven knows how much longer, 
leave their necks and arms bare ; not here and there 
one, " blinded, deluded, and misguided," but whole 
assemblies of fat women — and, tempora ! mores ! 
— and lean. Such parchment necks as I have seen 
bedizzened with diamonds, and arms bared, that 
seemed only fit to hold the scissors of destiny, or to 

stir the caldron of Macbeth's witches. dresses 

in azure satins and rose-coloured silks, and bares 
her arms as if they were as round and dimpled as a 
cherub's, though they are mere bunches of sinews, 
that seem only kept together, by that nice anatomical 
contrivance of the wristband on which Paley expa- 
tiates. This post-mortem demonstration is perhaps, 
after all, an act of penance for past vanities, or 
perhaps it is a benevolent admonition to the young 
and fair, that to this favour they must come at last ! 
Who knows 1* 

The entire absence of what seems to us fitness 
for the season may in part result from the cli- 
mate. In June and July, you know, we have all 
our dark and bright colours, and rich stuffs — every- 
thing that can elicit the idea of warmth, laid aside ; 
here we see every day velvets and boas, and purple, 
orange, and cherry silks and satins. Cherry, indeed, 
is the prevailing colour ; cherry feathers the favour- 

* It is to be hoped that Mrs. , in her promised essay on the 

philosophy of dress, will give some hints to our old ladies not to vio- 
late the harmonies by wearing auburn hair over wrinkled brows, and 
some to our young women on the bad taste of uniformity of costume 
without reference to individual circumstances or appearance. Her 
own countrywomen do not need these suggestions. 

Vol. L— K 



110 LONDON. 

ite headdress. I saw the Duchess of Cambridge the 
other evening at the opera with a crimson-velvet 
turban ! Remember, it is July ! 

We have seen in the gardens plenty of delicate 
muslins over gay-coloured silks; this is graceful, 
but to us it seems inappropriate for an out-of-door 
dress. 

The absence of taste in the middling classes pro- 
duces results that are almost ludicrous. I am in- 
clined to think taste is an original faculty, and only 
capable of a certain direction. This might explain 
the art of dress as it exists among the English, with 
the close neighbourhood of Paris, and French milli- 
ners actually living among them : and this might 
solve the mystery of the exquisite taste in garden- 
ing in England, and the total absence of it in 
France. 

As you descend in the scale to those who can 
have only reference to the necessities of life in their 
dress, the English are far superior to us. Here come 
in their ideas of neatness, comfort, and durability. 
The labouring classes are much more suitably dress- 
ed than ours. They may have less finery for holy- 
days, and their servants may not be so smartly 
dressed in the evening as are our domestics, but 
they are never shabby or uncleanly.* Their clothes 
are of stouter stuffs, their shoes stronger, and their 
dress better preserved. We have not, you know, 

* Would it not be better if our rich employers would persuade 
their women-servants to wear caps, and leave liveries to countries 
whose institutions they suit? 



LONDON. Ill 

been into the manufacturing districts, nor into the 
dark lanes and holes of London, where poverty hides 
itself; but I do not remember, in five weeks in Eno-- 
land, with my eyes pretty wide open, ever to have 
seen a ragged or dirty dress. Dirt and rags are 
the only things that come under a rigid sumptuary 
law in England. 

Order is England's, as it is Heaven's, first law. 
Coming from our head-over-heels land, it is striking 
and beautiful to see the precise order that prevails 
here. In the public institutions, in private houses, 
in the streets and thoroughfares, you enjoy the secu- 
rity and comfort of this Heaven-born principle. It 
raises your ideas of the capacities of human nature 
to see such masses of beings as there are in London 
kept, without any violation of their liberty, within 
the bounds of order. I am told the police system 
of London has nearly attained perfection. I should 
think so from the results. It is said that women 
may go into the street at any hour of the night 

without fear or danger ; and I know that Mrs. 

has often left us after ten o'clock, refusing the at- 
tendance of our servant as superfluous, to go alone 
through several streets to the omnibus that takes her 
to her own home.* 

* When we had been in London some weeks, one of my party 
asked me if I had not missed the New-York stacks of bricks and 
mortar, and if I had observed that we had not once heard a cry of 
" fire !" In these respects the contrast to our building and burning 
city is striking. In fifteen months' absence I never heard the cry 
of fire. 



112 LONDON. 



The system of ranks here, as absolute as the Ori- 
ental caste, is the feature in English society most 
striking to an American. For the progress of the 
human race it was worth coming to the New World 
to get rid of it. Yes, it was worth all that our por- 
tion of the human family sacrificed, encountered, and 
suffered. This system of castes is the more galling, 
clogging, and unhealthy, from its perfect unfitness to 
the present state of freedom and progress in England. 

Travellers laugh at our pretensions to equality, 
and Sir Walter Scott has said, as truly as wittily, 
that there is no perfect equality except among the 
Hottentots. But our inequalities are as changing as 
the surface of the ocean, and this makes all the dif- 
ference. Each rank is set about here with a thorny, 
impervious, and almost impassable hedge. We have 
our walls of separation, certainly; but they are as 
easily knocked down or surmounted as our rail- 
fences. 

With us, talents, and education, and refined man- 
ners command respect and observance, and so, I 
am sorry to say, does fortune ; but fortune has 
more than its proverbial mutability in the United 
States. The rich man of to-day is the poor man of 
to-morrow, and so vice versa. This unstableness 
has its evils, undoubtedly, and so has every modifi- 
cation of human condition ; but better the evil that 
is accidental than that which is authorized, cherish- 
ed, and inevitable. That system is most generous, 
most Christian, which allows a fair start to all; 






LONDON. 113 

some must reach the goal before others, as, for the 
most part, the race is ordained to the swift, and the 
battle to the strong. 

But you would rather have my observations than 
my speculations ; and as, in my brief survey, I have 
only seen the outside, it is all I can give you, my 
dear C. I have no details of the vices of any class. 
I have heard shocking anecdotes of the corrup- 
tion prevailing among the high people ; and men 
and women have been pointed out . to me in public 
places w T ho have been guilty of notorious conjugal 
infidelities, and the grossest violations of parental 
duty, without losing caste ; and this I have heard 
imputed to their belonging to a body that is above 
public opinion. I do not see how this can be, nor 
why the opinion of their own body does not bear 
upon them. Surely there should be virtue enough 
in such people as the Marquis of Lansdowne and the 
Duchess of Sutherland to banish from their world 
the violators of those laws of God and man, on 
which rest the foundations of social virtue and hap- 
piness. 

Those who, from their birth or their successful tal- 
ents, are assured of their rank, have the best manners. 
They are perfectly tranquil, safe behind the intrench- 
ments that have stood for ages. They leave it to the 
aspirants to be the videttes and defenders of the out- 
works. Those persons I have met of the highest rank 
have the simplest and most informal manners. I 

have before told you that Lord L and the Bishop 

of « reminded me of our friends Judge L and 

K2 



114 LONDON. 

Judge W , our best-mannered country-gentle- 
men. Their lordships have rather more conventional- 
ism, more practice, but there is no essential difference. 
Descend a little lower, and a very little lower than 
those gentry who by birth and association are inter- 
woven with the nobility, and you will see people 
with education and refinement enough, as you would 
think, to ensure them the tranquillity that comes 
of self-respect, manifesting a consciousness of in- 
feriority ; in some it appears in servility, as in Mrs. 
, who, having scrambled on to 's shoul- 
ders and got a peep into the lord-and-lady world, 
and heard the buzz that rises from the precincts 
of Buckingham Palace, entertained us through a 
long morning visit with third or fourth hand sto- 
ries about "poor Lady Flora;" or in obsequious- 
ness, as in the very pretty wife of , whose 

eyes, cheeks, and voice are changed if she is but 
spoken to by a titled person, though she remains as 
impassive as polar ice to the influence of a plebeian 
presence. Some manifest their impatience of this 
vassalage of caste in a petulent but impotent resist- 
ance, and others show a crushed feeling, not the hu- 
mility of the flower that has grown in the shade, but 
the abasement and incapacity ever to rise of that 
which has been trodden under foot. Even the 
limbs are stiffened and the gait modified by this 
consciousness that haunts them from the cradle to 
the grave. 

A certain great tailor was here yesterday morning 
to take R.'s directions. His bad grammar, his ob- 



LONDON. 115 

sequiousness, and his more than once favouring us 
with the information that he had an appointment 

with the Duke of , brought forcibly to my mind 

the person who holds the corresponding position in 

S . I thought of his frank and self-respecting 

manner, his well-informed mind, his good influence, 
and the probable destiny of his children. I leave 
you to jump to my conclusion. 

The language of the shopmen here indicates a 
want of education, and their obsequiousness express- 
es their consciousness that they are the " things that 
live by bowing." And, by-the-way, I see nothing 
like the rapidity of movement and adroitness in 
serving that you find in a New-York shop. You 
may buy a winter's supply at Stewart's while half 
a dozen articles are shown to you here. If you 
buy, they thank you ; and if you refuse to buy, you 
hear the prescribed automaton, "Thank you!" I 
say " prescribed," for you often perceive an under- 
current of insolence. You will believe me that it 
is not civility to which I object. 

As you go farther down from the tradesman to 
the servant, the marks of caste are still more offen- 
sive. Miss took me to the cottage of their 

herdsman. He had married a favourite servant, who 
had lived, I believe, from childhood in the family. 
The cottage was surrounded and filled with marks 

of affection and liberality. Miss had told me 

that the woman belonged to a class now nearly ex- 
tinct in England. " I verily believe," she said, 
" she thinks my mother and myself are made of a 



116 LONDON. 

different clay from her ;" and so her manner indi- 
cated, as she stood in a corner of the room, with 
her arms reverently folded, and courtesying with 

every reply she made to Miss , though nothing 

could be more kindly gracious than her manner. I 
thought of that dear old nurse who, though wear- 
ing the colour that is a brand among us, and not 
exceeded in devotedness by any feudal vassal of 
any age, expressed in the noble freedom of her 
manner that she not only felt herself to be of the 
same clay, but of the same spirit with those she 
served. 

I confess I do see something more than " urbani- 
ty" in this " homage." I do not wish to be remind- 
ed, by a man touching his hat or pulling his forelock 
every time I speak to him, that there is a gulf be- 
tween us. This is neither good for him nor me. 
Have those who pretend to fear the encroachments 
and growing pride of the inferior classes never any 
conscientious fears for their own humility ? Do their 
reflections never suggest to them that pride is the 
natural concomitant of conscious superiority ? But 
to return to these demonstrations of respect; they 
are not a sign of real deference. I have seen more 
real insolence here in five weeks in this class of peo- 
ple than I ever saw at home. At the inns, at the 
slightest dissatisfaction with the remuneration you 
offer, you are sure to be told, " Such as is ladies al- 
ways gives more." This is meanness as well as in- 
solence. 

As we drove off from Southampton a porter de- 



LONDON. 117 

manded a larger fee than we paid. H. called after 
us to be sure and give the fellow no more. The 
fellow knew his quarry ; he mounted on the coach, 
and kept with us through a long street, demanding 
and entreating with alternate insolence and abject- 
ness. He got the shilling, and then returning to the 
homage of his station, " Do you sit quite comfort- 
able, ladies?" he asked, in a sycophantic tone. 

" Yes." " Thank you." " Would not Miss 

like better this seat?" "No." "Thank you." 
Again I repeat it, it is not the civility I object to. 
I wish we had more of it in all stations ; but it 
is the hollow sound, which conveys to me no idea 
but the inevitable and confessed vassalage of a fel- 
low-being. 

I am aware that the sins we are not accustomed 
to are like those we are not inclined to, in the re- 
spect that we condemn them heartily and en masse 
Few Englishmen can tolerate the manners of our 
tradespeople, our innkeepers, and the domestics at 
our public houses. A little more familiarity with 
them would make them tolerant of the deficiencies 
that at first disgust them, and after a while they 
w T ould learn, as we do, to prize the fidelity and quiet 
kindness that abound among our servants without 
the expectation of pecuniary reward ; and they 
would feel that it is salutary to be connected with 
this large class of our humble fellow-creatures by 
other than sordid ties. 

If 1 have felt painfully that the men and women 
of what is called " good society" in America are 



118 LONDON. 

greatly inferior in high cultivation, in the art of con- 
versation, and in accomplishments, to a correspond- 
ing class here, I have felt quite assured that the 
"million" with us occupy a level they can never 
reach in England, do what they will with penny 
magazines and diffusive publications, while each 
class has its stall into which it is driven by the tyr- 
anny of an artificially constructed society. 

While the marks No. 2, No. 3, and so on, are seen 
cut in, there cannot be the conscious power and free- 
dom, and the self-respect brightening the eye, giving 
free play to all the faculties, and urging onward and 
upward, which is the glory of the United States, and 
a new phase of human society. 

With your confirmed habits, my dear C, you 
might not envy the English the luxuries and mag- 
nificence of their high civilization; but I am sure 
you would the precise finish of their skilful agricul- 
ture, and the all-pervading comfort of their every- 
day existence. If you have money, there is no hu- 
man contrivance for comfort that you cannot com- 
mand here. Let you be where you will, in the coun- 
try or in town, on land or on water, in your home or 
on the road, but signify your desires, and they may be 
gratified. And it is rather pleasant, dear C. — it would 
be with your eye for order — to be in a country where 
there are no bad — bad ! no imperfect roads, no bro- 
ken or unsound bridges, no swinging gates, no barn- 
doors off the hinges, no broken glass, no ragged 
fences, no negligent husbandry, nothing to signify 
that truth omnipresent in America, that there is a 



1 



LONDON. 119 

great deal more work to do than hands to do it. 
And so it will be with our uncounted acres of un- 
subdued land for ages to come. But we are of Eng- 
lish blood, and we shall go forward and subdue our 
great farm, and make it, in some hundreds of years, 
like the little garden whence our fathers came. In 
the mean time, we must expect the English travel- 
lers who come among us to be annoyed with the ab- 
sence of the home-comforts which habit has made 
essential to their well-being, and to be startled, and, 
it may be, disgusted with the omission of those signs 
and shows of respect and deference to which they 
have been accustomed ; but let us not be disturbed 
if they growl, for " 'tis their nature to," and surely 
they should be forgiven for it.* 

* It is difficult for an American to appreciate the complete change 
that takes place in a European's position and relations on coming to 
this country ; if he did, he would forgive the disgusts and uneasiness 
betrayed even by those who have the most philanthropic theories. 
He who was born in an atmosphere of elegance and refinement, far 
above the masses of his fellow-beings ; who has seen them eager to 
obey his slightest signal, to minister to his artificial wants, ready to 
sit at his feet, to open a way for him, or to sustain him on their 
shoulders ; who is always so far above them as to be in danger of en- 
tirely overlooking them, finds suddenly that all artificial props are 
knocked from under him, and he is brought down to a level with 
these masses, each individual elbowing his own way, and he obliged 
to depend on his own merit for all the eminence he attains. M. de 
Tocqueville is a striking illustration of the conflict between a demo- 
cratic faith and the habits and tastes engendered by a European edu- 
cation. Perhaps some observation and reflection on this subject 
would convince parents of the injudiciousness of rearing children in 
Europe who are to live in America. 



120 ANTWERP. 

July 8. — To-morrow we leave England, having 
seen but a drop in the ocean of things worthy to be 
examined. We mean, next year, to travel over it, 
to see the country, to visit the institutions of benev- 
olence, the schools, &c. We are now to plunge into 
a foreign country, with a foreign language and for- 
eign customs. It seems like leaving home a second 
time. If anything could make us forget that we are 
travellers, it would be such unstinted kindness as 
we have received here. You cannot see the English 
in their homes without reverencing and loving them ; 
nor, I think, can an Anglo-American come to this, 
his ancestral home, without a pride in his relationship 
to it, and an extended sense of the obligations im- 
posed by his derivation from the English stock. A 
war between the two countries, in the present state of 
their relations and intercourse, would be fratricidal, 
and this sentiment I have heard expressed on all 
sides. 



Antwerp, July 12, 1839. 

My dear C, 
We left the Tower Stairs yesterday at twelve, 
and were rowed to the steamer Soho, lying out in 
the Thames, in a miserable little boat, the best we 
could obtain. We found a natural American conso- 
lation in remarking the superiority of our White- 
hall boats. We nearly incurred that first of all 
minor miseries (if it be minor), losing our baggage. 



ANTWERP. 121 

Francois, not speaking a word of English, has been 
of little use to us ; and in our greatest need, at our 
arrivals and departures, he has been worse than use- 
less, as John Bull's nerves are disturbed by a foreign 
tongue, and the sub-officials are sure to get in a 
fluster. Mr. P.'s intervention came in most timely 
to our aid, and the last boat from the shore brought 
us our baggage safely. What we shall do with- 
out this friend, whose ministering kindness has 
been so steadfast and so effective, I know not ; 
though Franqois said, as soon as he had shaken the 
London dust from his feet, with a ludicrously self- 
sufficient air, " a present, madame, le courier fait 
tout !"* 

The Soho, we were told, is the best steamer that 
plies between London and Antwerp. It is one hun- 
dred and seventy-five feet in length and twenty- 
eight in breadth. It has some advantages over our 
Hudson River steamers, a steadier motion, the result 
of more perfect machinery, a salle a manger (an eat- 
ing-room where there are no berths), and two din- 
ners, served two hours apart. So that, with one 
hundred and twenty passengers, there is no scram- 
bling, and the dinner is served with English order, 
and eaten at leisure. I was disappointed to find, last 
night, our condition quite as bad as in a similar po- 
sition at home. There were thirty more passengers 
than berths, and these luckless thirty were strewn 
over the saloon floor, after having waited till a late 
hour for the last loitering men to be driven forth 
* " From this time your courier does everything." 

Vol. L— L 



122 ANTWERP. 

from their paradise, the dinner-table. The servants 
were incompetent, and the bedding was deficient, 
and in the morning we had no place for washing, 
no dressing-room but this cluttered, comfortless 
apartment. We all felt a malignant pleasure in hav- 
ing these annoyances to fret about in an English do- 
minion. Even they cannot beguile Dame Comfort to 
sea — like a sensible woman, she is a stayer-at-home, 
a lover of the fireside. The English go in troops 
and caravans to Germany and Switzerland for the 
summer, and most of our fellow-passengers seemed 
to be of these gentry, travelling for pleasure. How 
different from the miscellaneous crowd of an Amer- 
ican steamer ! There is here more conventional 
breeding, not more civility, than with us. 

When I went on deck in the morning we had 
entered the Scheldt, and poor M., with her eyes half 
open, was dutifully trying to sketch the shores. 
They are so low and uniform that a single horizon- 
tal stroke of her pencil would suffice to give you at 
home all the idea we got ; and, for a fac-simile of 
the architecture, you may buy a Dutch town at 
Werckmeister's toyshop. 

We now, for the first, realize* that we are in a 
foreign land, and feel our distance from home. In 
our memory and feeling England blends with our 
own country. 

We entered into the court of the Hotel St. An- 

* My English reader must pardon the frequent repetition of this 
word, and may judge of the worth of its American use by the reply 
of my friend, to whom I said, " I cannot dispense with this word." 
" Dispense with it 1 I could as well dispense with bread and water !" 



ANTWERP. 123 

toine through an arched stone gateway, and were, 
for the first time in our lives, in a paved court, round 
three sides of which the house, in the common Con- 
tinental fashion, is built. The mistress of the hotel, 
in pretty full dress, came out to receive us ; and, af- 
ter hearing our wants, we were conducted through 
a paved gallery to spacious and well-furnished apart- 
ments. Before the hotel is a little square, surround- 
ed with three rows of dwarf elm-trees, and in hon- 
our of these, I presume, called La Place Verte 
(Green Place), for there is nothing else green about 
it. The ground is incessantly trodden by people 
crossing it, or seated about on the wooden benches 
in social squads. All the womankind wear a high 
lace cap, dropping low at the ears, short gowns, and 
very full petticoats in the Dutch fashion, with which 
we were familiar enough formerly at Albany. A 
better class wear a black shawl over the head hang- 
ing down to their feet — a remnant of the Spanish 
mantilla. It is curious to see this and other vestiges 
of Spanish occupation here, such as some very grand 
old Spanish houses. 

We have been driving about the town in a com- 
fortable carriage, six of us besides the coachman, 
after a fat, sleek Flemish horse, who seemed quite 
able to trot off double the number, if need were. I 
wish I could give you a glimpse of these streets 
thronging with human life, and seemingly happy 
human life too. The " honest Flemings" have a 
most contented look. I almost doubt my identity 
as I hear this din of a foreign tongue in my ear, and 



124 ANTWERP. 

the clattering of the wooden shoes on the pavement. 
However, that " I is I" I feel too surely at this mo- 
ment, having just mounted the tower of the Cathe- 
dral, 613 steps : a cathedral built in 1300, and eigh- 
ty-three years in the building. The tower is beauti- 
fully wrought. Charles V. said of it, it should be 
kept in a case, and Napoleon compared it to Mech- 
lin lace. If these great people have not the fairy 
gift of dropping pearls from their lips, their words 
are gold for the guides that haunt these show- 
places. We paid two francs for the above jeux 
d'esprit to a young ciceroni, who could speak in- 
telligibly French, Spanish, English, Italian, and 
Flemish of course, but could not write, and had 
never heard of America ! ! 

We saw from the gallery of the tower to a dis- 
tance (on the word of our guide) of eighty miles. 
The atmosphere was perfectly transparent, undim- 
med by a particle of smoke from the city ; a fact ac- 
counted for by the fuel used being exclusively a spe- 
cies of hard coal. It is worth while to mount a 
pinnacle in a country like this, where there is no 
eminence to intercept the view. You see the Scheldt, 
which is about as wide as the Hudson at Albany, 
winding far, far away through a sea of green and 
waving corn,* and towers, churches, and villages in- 
numerable. The view gave us New- World people 

* Some of our readers may not be aware that this word is not ap- 
plied in Europe, as with us, alone to Indian corn, but to every kind of 
grain. 



ANTWERP. 125 

a new idea of populousness* After we descended 
from the tower a bit of antiquity was pointed out to 
us that would have interested your young people 
more than any view in Belgium. It is an old well 
covered with an iron canopy wrought by Quentin 
Matsys, the " Blacksmith of Antwerp," who, before 
blacksmiths were made classic by Scott's " Harry 
of the Winde," fell in love with the pretty daugh- 
ter of a painter, and left his anvil and took to paint- 
ing to win her, and did win her, and for himself 
won immortality by at least one master-piece in the 
art, as all who have seen his " Misers" at Windsor 
will testify. 

Antwerp is rich in paintings. Many master- 
pieces of the Flemish painters are here, and, first 
among the first, " Ruben's Descent from the Cross." 
Do not think, dear C, that, before I have even cross- 
ed the threshold of the temple of art, I give you 
my opinion about such a painting as of any value. 
I see that the dead body is put into the most dif- 
ficult position to be painted, and that the painter 
has completely overcome the difficulty ; that the 
figures are perfect in their anatomy, and that the 
flesh is flesh, living flesh ; but I confess the picture 
did not please me. It seemed to me rather a sue-? 
cessful representation of the physical man than the 
imbodiment of the moral sublime which the sub- 
ject demands. Another picture by Rubens, in the 
church of St. Jacques, was far more interesting to 

* This was from the dense population of the surrounding country, 
Antwerp itself contains but about 77,000 inhabitants. 

L2 



126 BRUSSELS. 

me. It is, considering the subject, fortunately placed, 
being the altar-piece of the altar belonging to the 
family of Rubens ; and you look at it with the feel- 
ing that you are in the presence of this greatest of 
Flemish artists, as the marble slab on which you are 
treading tells you that his body lies beneath it. The 
revolutionary French, with their dramatic enthusiasm 
for art, spared this tomb when they broke open 
and pillaged every other one in this church. The 
picture is called a holy family. The painter, by in- 
troducing his own dearest kindred with the names 
and attributes of saints, has canonized them without 
leave of pope or cardinal. His own portrait he 
called St. George ; his father's, St. Jerome ; his old 
grandfather's, Time ; and his son naturally enough 
falls into the category of angels. Martha and Mary 
Magdalen, two most lovely women, are portraits of 
his two wives ; one of these is said to be the same 
head as the famous (( Chapeau de Paille"— probably 
the Magdalen. 

For the rest— and what a rest of churches, pic- 
tures, carvings, and tombs, that cost us hours of toil- 
some pleasure, I spare you. 



Brussels, Monday, 15. — We came here twenty- 
live miles by railroad. The cars we thought as 
good as those on the " Great Western" in England ; 
and our fare was a third less, and so was our speed. 
The country was a dead level. A Flemish painter 
only could work up its creature comforts into pic- 



BRUSSELS. 127 

turesqueness ; rich it certainly is, and enjoyed it ap- 
pears. After a bustle and confusion at the depot 
that made us feel quite at home, we finally got into 
an omnibus with twelve persons inside, nearly as 
many outside, and an enormous quantity of bag- 
gage, all drawn with apparent ease by two of these 
gigantic Flemish horses, looking, like their masters, 
well content with their lot in life. 

Brussels is a royal residence, and gay with pal- 
aces and park. The park impresses me as twice as 
large as St. John's in New-York ; it has abundance 
of trees, a bit of water with a rich fringe of flowers, 
and statues, in bad taste enough. There are splen- 
did edifices overlooking it, and among them the pal- 
ace of the Prince of Orange, and King Leopold's. 
That of the Prince of Orange, which Leopold, with 
singular delicacy for a king, has refused to occupy or 
touch, is shown to strangers. We were unlucky in 
the moment of making our application to see it. 
First come first served is the democratic rule adopted. 
Four parties were before us, and as we could not 
bribe the portress to favour us — to her honour I re- 
cord it— and had no time to waste in waiting, we 
came away and left unseen its choice collection of 
paintings. Our coachman, to console us for our 
disappointment, urged us to go into the royal coach- 
house and see a carriage presented to William, 
which, he gave us his assurance — truly professional 
• — was better worth seeing than anything in Brus- 
sels ! A gorgeous thing it was, all gold and crim- 
son outside, white satin and embroidery in j and with 



128 BRUSSELS. 

a harness emblazoned with crowns. Besides this 
were ten other coaches of various degrees of mag- 
nificence. 

We next visited the lace manufactory of Monsieur 
Ducepetiaux. The Brussels' lace is, as perhaps you 
do not know, the most esteemed of this most deli- 
cate of fabrics. "The flax from which it is made 
grows .near Hal ; the finest sort costs from 3000 to 
4000 francs per pound, and is worth its weight in 
gold. Everything depends on the tenuity of its 
fibre."* 

It was fete-day, and we found only a few old 
w T omen at work ; however, we were shown the whole 
process very courteously, without any other fee be- 
ing expected than a small alms to the poor work- 
women, which, after seeing them, it would be diffi- 
cult to withhold. I observed women from sixty to 
seventy at this cobweb-work without spectacles, and 
was told that the eye was so accustomed to it as not 
to be injured by it; a wonderful instance of the 
power of adaptation in the human frame in its most 
delicate organ. Girls begin at this work at four 
years of age, and the overseer told us she employ- 
ed old women of eighty. They begin at six in the 
morning- and work till six in the evening ; the max- 
imum of wages is one franc; and, to earn this, a 
woman must work skilfully and rapidly twelve hours 
and find herself! I thought of the king's ten coaches. 

There are a good many changes to be made be- 
fore this becomes " the best of all possible worlds !" 

* Murray'6 Hand-Book. 



BRUSSELS. 129 

I spare you our visit to the Cathedral, &c., but I 
wish, my dear C, I could show you the most fantas- 
tical pulpit ever made : the master-piece of Ver- 
Bruggen, with the story of Adam and Eve carved 
in wood. I am sure the artist had his own private 
readings of his work. There seemed to me. some 
precious satire in the symbols he has perched about 
the pulpit — the monkey ! the peacock ! and the ser- 
pent ! 

We went into the market-place this morning. It 
was filled with well-looking peasants, with good 
teeth and rich nice hair. They were selling flow- 
ers, fruit, and vegetables. They addressed us in a 
very kindly manner, always as " ma chere." We 
saw excellent butter for ten sous per pound, a good 
cabbage for two sous, two quarts of beans for four 
sous. 

This market-square, now looking so cheerful with 
the fruits of man's rural industry, has been stained 
with the blood of martyrs of liberty. It was here 
that Counts Egmont and Horn were executed by the 
order of the ruthless Alva; and in the Hotel de 
Ville, overlooking the square, we saw the hall where 
his master, Charles V., went through the ceremony 
of abdication. 

We pay here, for a good carriage and two horses, 
two francs per hour. Some difference, M. remarks, 
between this and the price we paid in London of 
one pound twelve shillings per day ; but nowhere, 
I believe, is social life so taxed as in London. 



130 BRUSSELS. 

We set off this morning for the field of Waterloo, 
a distance of twelve miles from Brussels. I sat on 
the box beside our coachman, a civilized young 
man. Travelling is a corrector of one's vanities. I 
heard myself designated in the court to-day as " la 
dame qui s'assit a cote du cocher" — my only dis- 
tinction here. I liked my position. My friend was 
intelligent and talkative, and not only gave me such 
wayside information as I asked, but the history of 
his father's courtship and a little love-story of his 
own, which is just at the most critical point of dra- 
matic progress, and of which, alas! I shall never 
know the denceuement. 

It is the anniversary of the Belgian revolution, 
and, of course, a fete-day. The streets were throng- 
ed. I should imagine the whole number of inhabi- 
tants, 100,000, were out of doors ; and as the streets 
are narrow and have no side-walks, we made slow 
progress through the crowd — but so much the better. 
It was pleasant looking in their good, cheerful faces, 
the children in their holyday suits, and the women in 
their clean caps and freshest ribands. Green boughs 
hung over the windows, and the fruit-stalls were 
decked with flowers. I looked up the lanes on the 
right and left; they were a dense mass of human 
beings, looking well fed and comfortably clad. 
" Where are your poor people V I asked my friend. 
" They are put a oneside," he replied. Alas ! so are 
they everywhere if in the minority. There was 
wretchedness enough in those lanes that now ap- 



BRUSSELS. 131 

peared so well; but he assured me I might walk 
through them without fear, " the police was too 
strong for them." The suburbs were thronged too ; 
the straggling little villages along the road full of 
human life. The women and men were sitting on 
long benches beside the houses, drinking beer and 
eating cakes. The pressure of the population would 
have driven Malthus mad. Everything of woman- 
kind, down to the girl of four years old, had a baby 
in her arms, and young things were strewn over the 
ground, kicking up their heels, and making all man- 
ner of youthful demonstrations of happiness. 

If some of our worn, pale mothers, who rock their 
cradles by the hour in close rooms, would turn their 
young ones into the sweet open air, they would find 
it play upon their spirits like the breath of Heaven 
on an iEolian harp. I never before saw the young 
human animal as happy as other animals, nor felt 
how much they were the creatures of mere sensation. 
"You see how well they look," said my friend, 
who observed my pleasure in gazing at them ; " they 
work hard too, all that can work, and eat no- 
thing but potatoes and milk." Simple, wholesome 
diet, and plenty of fresh air : this tells the whole 
story of health. 

The forest of Soignies, which Byron makes poet- 
cally grieve over the " unreturning brave," lies now, 
at least a good portion of it, as low as they ; and in 
the place of it are wheat, barley, potatoes, &c, which 
my utilitarian friend thought far better than unedi- 
ble trees. The King of the Netherlands made a 



V 



132 BRUSSELS. 

very pretty present to Wellington, along with his 
title of " Prince of Waterloo," of 1000 acres of this 
forest-land, which is extremely valuable for its tim- 
ber. Waterloo itself is a straggling, mean little vil- 
lage, in which, as we were going to the burial-place 
of thousands of brave men, we did not stop to weep 
over the grave of the Marquis of Anglesea's leg, 
which, with its monument, epitaph, and weeping 
willow, is one of the regular Waterloo lions. At 
Mont St. Jean, on the edge of the field of battle, 
we took our guide Martin, a peasant with a most 
humane physiognomy, indicating him fitter to show 
a battle-field than to fight on it. 

Now do not fear that I am about to commit the 
folly of describing " the field of Waterloo." I shall 
merely tell you that we have seen the places whose 
names are magic words in the memories of those 
who remember 1815. As we left Mont St. Jean 
we came upon an unenclosed country, and at the 
large farmhouse called Ferme de Mont St. Jean we 
first saw a mound, surmounted by the Belgic lion. 
This mound is two hundred feet high, and covers 
the common burying-place of friends and foes. The 
lion is placed over the very spot where the Prince 
of Orange was wounded, and is cast from the can- 
non taken in the field of battle. To those cavillers 
who see no good reason why, amid such a mass of 
valiant sufferers, a wound of the Prince of Orange 
should be illustrated, or why the Belgic lion should 
crown the scene, and who lament that the face of 
the field has been changed by the elevation of the 



BRUSSELS. 133 

mound, it has been answered pithily, if not satisfac- 
torily, that it is appropriate, " since it serves at once 
for a memorial, a trophy, and a tomb."* 

Hougoumont remains as it was after the day of 
the battle. It is an old Flemish chateau, with farm- 
offices and a walled garden. The house is shatter- 
ed, and the walls look as if they had been through 
the wars. There were twenty-seven Englishmen in 
the chapel, a structure not more than thirteen feet 
square, when it took fire. A wooden image of 
our Saviour is suspended over the door; and our 
guide averred (and, though a guide, with a moist- 
ened eye) that when the flames reached the image 
they stopped. " C'est vrai," he repeated. " Aux 
pieds du bon Dieu ! Un miracle, n'est ce pas, ma- 
dame V'f I almost envied the faith that believed 
the miracle, and had the miracle to believe. The 
English, in their passion for such relics, had begun 
chipping off the foot, and our good Martin said, 
shuddering, that if the proper authority had not in- 
terfered, " on auroit mis le bon Dieu toutes en 

* It was interesting to read, on the very spot, Byron's testimony 
to this as a position for a battle-field. " As a plain," he says, " Wa- 
terloo seems marked out for the scene of some great action, though 
this may be mere imagination. I have viewed with attention those 
of Plataea, Troy, Mantinea, Leuctra, Cheronea, and Marathon ; and 
the field around Mont St. Jean and Hougoumont appears to want 
little but a better cause, and that undefinable but impressive halo 
which the lapse of ages throws around a celebrated spot, to vie in 
interest with any or all of them, except, perhaps, the last men- 
tioned." 

t " It is indeed true. At the feet of the good God. A miracle, 
was it not, madam ?" 

Vol. L— M 



134 BRUSSELS. 

pieces !" The Catholic sentiment is nearly untrans- 
lateable into Protestant English. 

The inner wall is written over with the names of 
visiters. Byron's was there; but some marauding 
traveller has broken away the plaster and carried it 
off to Paris. " Do you not think," said our guide, 
with an honest indignation, "that a man must be 
crazy to do this ¥' The simple peasant-guide knew 
the worth of Byron's name. This is fame. 

We drove round the rich wheat-field to La Haye 
Sainte. There is no ground in all rich Belgium so 
rich as this battle-field. In the spring the darkest 
and thickest corn tells where the dead were buried! 
The German legion slaughtered at La Haye Sainte 
are buried on the opposite side of the road, where 
there is a simple monument over them. 

" Set where thou wilt thy foot, thou scarce canst tread 
Here on a spot unhallowed by the dead." 

La Belle Alliance, where Wellington and Blucher 
met after the battle, was pointed out to us ; and Na- 
poleon's different positions, the very spot where he 
stood when he first descried Blucher, and his heart 
for the last time swelled with anticipated triumph. 
How I wished for Hal to stand with me where 
Wellington gave that ringing order, " Up, guards, 
and at them !" 

We were shown the places where Gordon, Pic- 
ton, and others of note fell; and there, where the 
masses lay weltering in blood, the unknown, unhon- 
oured, unrecorded, there was 



BRUSSELS. 135 

" Horror breathing from the silent ground." 

" It was a piteous sight," said our guide, " to see 
the next day, the men, with clasped hands, begging 
for a glass of water. Some had lost one side of the 
face with a sabre-cut ; others had their bowels lain 
open ! They prayed us to put an end to their mis- 
eries, and said, ' surely God would forgive us.' All 
the peasants, men, women, and children, that had 
not been driven clear away, came in to serve them ; 
but there were not enough ; and they died, burned 
with thirst, and their wounds gangrened, for there 
were not surgeons for the half of them. They would 
crawl down to those pools of water and wash their 
wounds ; the water was red and clotted with blood. 
Oh, c'est un grand malheur, la guerre, mesdames !" 
he concluded. Martin would be an eloquent agent 
for our friend Ladd's Peace Society. 



Belgium is a perfect garden. Between Brussels 
and Liege, a distance of sixty miles, we did not see, 
over all the vast plain, one foot of unused earth. 
There are crops of wheat, rye, oats, beans, and 
pease, and immense cabbage plantations, with no 
enclosures, neither fences nor hedges; no apparent 
division of property. You might fancy the land 
was under the dominion of an agrarian law, and 
that each child of man might take an equal share 
from mother earth ; but, alas ! when the table is 
spread there is many a one left without a cover. 

On arriving at the depot, a league from Liege, we 



136 BRUSSELS. 

had a scene of confusion unusual in these countries, 
that should and do get the benefit of order from their 
abounding police-men. A number of arklike, two- 
story omnibuses were drawn up. Calling out be- 
ing prohibited, the signal to attract attention was a 
hiss, and the hissing of rival conductors was like no- 
thing so much as a flock of enraged geese. We got 
involved in a dispute that menaced us with a fate 
similar to that adjudged by Solomon to the contested 
child. Monsieur le Courier had promised us to the 
" omnibus Jaune," and Mademoiselle la Couriere to 
the " omnibus Rouge ;" the yellow finally carried it, 
and we were driven off amid such hisses as Dante 
might have imagined a fit Inferno for a bad actor. 
Poor M. lost her travelling-cloak in the confusion. 
I can tell you nothing of Liege, from my own obser- 
vation, but that it is a most picturesque old place, 
with one part of the town rising precipitously above , 
the other in the fashion of Quebec ; and that w T e 
went to see the interior court of the Palais de Jus- 
tice, formerly the archbishop's palace, whose name 
will recall to you Quentin Derward. It is sur- 
rounded by a colonnade with short pillars, each 
carved after a different model. "We walked round 
the space within the colonnade, which is filled with 
stalls containing such smaller merchandise as you 
find around our market-places. The English call 
Liege the Birmingham of Belgium. Their staple 
manufactory is firearms, and Mr. Murray tells us 
" they produce a better article, and at a lower price, 
than can be made for the same sum in England" — a 



LIEGE. 137 

feather, this, in the Belgian cap ! The source of their 
prosperity is the abundance of coal in the neighbour- 
hood. " The mines are worked on the most scien- 
tific principles. Previous to the revolution, Holland 
was supplied with coal from Belgium ; but the home 
consumption has since increased to such an extent 
from the numerous manufactories which have sprung 
up on all sides, that the Belgian mines are now in- 
adequate to supply the demand, and a recent law 
has been passed, permitting the importation of coals 
from Newcastle."* Wise Hollanders ! 



The diligences did not suit our hours, and Francois 
could obtain no carriage to take us to Aix-la-Cha- 
pelle but an enormous lumbering omnibus. Ima- 
gine what a travelling-carriage ! Though the dis- 
tance is but about twenty- five miles, we were nine 
mortal hours passing it ; however, it was through a 
lovely country, varied with hill and dale, a refresh- 
ing variety after the monotonous dead-level of our 
preceding days in Belgium. On leaving Liege we 
passed the Meuse and ascended a long hill, and from 
the summit looked over a world of gracefully-formed 
land, all under the dominion of the husbandman. 
The fields are enclosed by hedges, inferior to the 
English, but resembling them in the trees that inter- 
sperse them. There is very little pasture-land amid 
this garden-like cultivation. I have seen one flock 
of sheep to-day of a tall, slender breed ; and very 

* Murray's Hand-Book. 

MS 



138 LIEGE. 

beautiful cows, white with brown spots, that, cow- 
fancier as you are, would enchant you. They rival 
your Victoria and her mother the duchess. 

We passed villages at short intervals, not bearing 
the smallest resemblance to a New-England village, 
for there is nothing that bears the name in Europe 
so beautiful. I may say this without presumption 
after having seen the English villages. The village 
here is usually one long street of small, mean houses 
built contiguously. At almost every house there is 
something exposed to sell. The tenants are all out 
of door — the "seven ages" of man — and at least 
half are smoking. We saw girls not more than six 
years old with their pipes; and they smoke on to 
old age, apparently cheerful and healthy. Yet we 
hold tobacco to be a poison ; perhaps the out-of- 
door life is the antidote. We have passed pretty 
villas to-day, and substantial farm-houses with cap- 
ital barns and offices, all indicating rural plenty. 

With the threats of beggars in our guide-book, 
we have been surprised at our general exemption; 
but to-day we have seen enough of them, and a 
sight it is quite as novel to our New-World eyes 
as a cathedral or a — police-man. They have fol- 
lowed us in troops, and started out from their lit- 
tle lairs planted along the road, blind old men and 
old crones on crutches. As we begin the ascension 
of the hills we hear slender young voices, almost 
overpowered by the rattling of the wheels on the 
paved road ; by degrees they multiply and grow 
louder, and before we reach the summit they over- 



LIEGE. 139 

power every other sound, crying out to the made- 
moiselles in the coupe and to the monsieur and ma- 
dame in the in'terieare, in a mongrel patois of French 
and Flemish : " Ah donnez moi un petit morceau 
de brod — vous n'en serez pas plus pauvre — da-do — 
charite pour un pauvre aveugle, madame — da-do !"* 
A few leagues before reaching Liege we experi- 
enced another equally disagreeable characteristic of 
the social system of the Old World. We passed 
the Prussian frontier, and were admonished by the 
black eagle — a proper insignia for a custom-house, 
a bird of prey — that our baggage must be inspected. 
We dreaded the disturbance of our trunks, and 
looked with suitable detestation on the mustachoed 
officials that approached us. While they were chaf- 
fering with Francois to settle the question whether 
they should go up to the baggage or the baggage 
come down to them, and deciding that the mountain 
should come to Mahomet, an officer of as harmless 
aspect as Deacon I., with spectacles on nose and a 
baby in his arms, came to our relief, saying that if 
Monsieur le Courier would give his parole d'hon- 
neur (a courier's parole d'honneur !) that there was 
nothing to declare — that is, customable — the exami- 
nation might be omitted. Francois pledged his 
word, and there was no farther trouble. This con- 
trasts with the torment we had in England, of hav- 
ing all our baggage overhauled and disarranged, 
and sent home to us, some light articles lost and 

* " Give us a morsel of bread— da-do— you will not be the poorer 
for it— do-da /—charity for a poor blind man !" 



140 AIX-LA-CHAPELLE. 

delicate ones ruined. That this should happen in 
civilized England at this time of day is disgraceful. 
I felt it a mortification, as if the barbarism had been 
committed by my own kindred. 
' While our lunch was preparing we strolled off to 
a little meadow, where there were some young peo- 
ple loading a cart with hay. We sat down on the 
grass. The scene was pretty and rural, and so 
home-like that, it brought tears to our eyes ; home- 
like, except that there was a girl not so big as your 
Grace — no, not five years old, raking hay and smo- 
king a pipe. 

Returning to the inn we passed the open window 
of our friend the master of the customs. I thanked 
him for his forbearance. He appeared gratified, 
and when we came away he came out of his door 
with a friend, and they bowed low and repeatedly. 
Better this wayside courtesy than the bickerings that 
usually occur on similar occasions. 



Aix-la-Chapelle. — This name will at once recall 
to you Charlemagne, whose capital and burying- 
place it was. We have just returned from La Cha- 
pelle, which so conveniently distinguishes this from 
the other Aix in Europe. Otho built the present 
church on the site of Charlemagne's chapel, pre- 
serving its original octagonal form, which Char- 
lemagne, intending it for his own tomb, adopted 
from the holy sepulchre at Jerusalem. We stood 
under the centre of the dome on a large marble slab, 



A1X-LA-CHAPELLE. 141 

inscribed " Carolo Magno ;" and over our heads hung 
a massive chandelier, the gift of Frederic Barbarossa. 
How these material things conjured back from the 
dead these mighty chieftains ! 

The vault must have been a startling sight when 
Otho opened it and found the emperor, not in the 
usual supine ire, but seated on his throne in his 

imperial robes, with the crown on his fleshless brow, 
his sceptre in his hand, the good sword joyeuse at 
his side, the Gospels on his knee, the pilgrim's pouch, 
which, living, he always wore, still at his girdle, and 
precious jewels sparkling amid decay and ashes. The 
sacristan showed us his scull — the palace of the 
soul ! — enclosed in a silver case. His lofty soul has, 
I trust, now a fitter palace. There are shown also 
several relics found in his tomb which touch a 
chord of general sympathy : his hunting-horn, a 
relic of the true cross, and a locket containing the 
Virgin's hair, which he wore in death, as he had al- 
ways worn in life. 

This church is said to be the oldest in Germany. 
The choir, built in 1356, is more modern. Its paint- 
ed windows are so exquisite in their form that they 
affect you like a living beauty. 

There is a fete to-day. The " grandes reliques" 
which are shown once in seven years, are exhibiting, 
and the town is thronged with the peasantry. They 
were literally packed on the little place before 
the Cathedral. A priest was in a very high gallery 
with attendants, displaying the relics. This church 
is rich in these apocryphal treasures. The priest 



142 AIX-LA-CHAPELLE. 

held up one thing after another, the Virgin's che- 
mise, the swaddling-clothes, &c., against a black 
surface, and at each holy thing down sunk the mass 
upon their knees. There were exceptions to this de- 
vout action ; travellers who, like us, were staring, and 
talking, and making discord with the deep responses, 
and there were a few persons pushing their way 
through the crowd, hawking little books in German 
and French describing the relics; and selling beads 
that had been blessed by the priest. If not holy, 
the relics have an historical interest that makes them 
well worth seeing. They were presented to Charle- 
magne by a patriarch of Jerusalem, and by a Per- 
sian king.* 

The baths of Aix were enjoyed by the Romans. 
"We went to one in the centre of the town, where a 
brazen lion spouts out the mineral water, and where 
there is a very handsome building with a colonnade 
and refreshment-rooms. We would have gladly lin- 
gered here for a few days instead of these very few 
hours; but, like all our country people, we seem 
always urged by some demon on — on — on. 



Cologne. — Still, my dear C, the same story to 

tell you of yesterday's journey. The peasants have 

; just begun their mowing and harvesting, and the hay 

and corn are all as thick as the choicest bits in our 

choice meadows. There were immense plantations 

* " Formerly 150,000 pilgrims resorted to this fete, and so late 
as 1832 there were 43,000." 



COLOGNE. 143 

of potatoes, oats, pease, and beans ; no fences, hedges, 
or barrier of any sort — one vast sea of agricultural 
wealth. 

We are now, as Mr. Murray tells us, " in the lar- 
gest and wealthiest city on the Rhine,"* and have 
more than enough to do if we see the half set forth 
on the eight well-filled pages of his best of all 
guide-books. We leave here at four P.M. : so you 
see how slight a view we can have even of the out- 
side of things. Our habit of breakfasting at nine 
abridges our active time, but it gives me a quiet 
morning hour for my journal. Do you know — I did 
not — that Cologne received its name from Agrip- 
pina, Nero's mother — surely the most wretched 
of women 1 She was born here, and sent hither 
a Roman colony, calling the place Colonia Agrip- 
pina. A happy accident I should think it, if I 
were a Colognese, that blotted out her infamous 
name from my birthplace. 



We passed the day most diligently ; and as it is 
not in human nature not to value that which costs 
us labour, you must feel very grateful to me if I 
spare you the description of church after church, 
reliques, and pictures. Such reliques, too, as the 
real bones of St. Ursula and her thirteen thousand 
virgins ! the bones, real too, of the Magi, the three 
kings of Cologne (whose vile effigies are blazoned 
on half the sign-boards on the Continent), and such 
pictures as Ruben's crucifixion of St. Peter, which 

* Cologne has 65,000 inhabitants. 



144 COLOGNE. 

he deemed his best, because his last, probably. The 
real thing, that would please you better than all the 
reliques in Belgium, is the establishment of Eau de 
Cologne, of the actual Jean Maria Farina, whose 
name and fame have penetrated as far as Napoleon's. 
No wonder that this dirtiest of all towns should have 
elicited the perfumer's faculties. When some one 
said, "The Rhine washes Cologne," it was pithily 
asked, " What washes the Rhine V 9 

Another sight here, my dear C, would in earnest 
have pleased you ; the only one of the kind I have 
seen on the Continent: troops of little boys and 
girls with their books and slates. A woman of dis- 
tinction, who was born here, tells us that the feudal 
feeling of clanship is in high preservation. " I never 
come here," she says, " without being assailed by 
some one of the basse classe } who obliges me to lis- 
ten to all the details of a family grievance as if it 
were the affair of my own household." This senti- 
ment of feudal dependance will probably melt away 
before the aforesaid books and slates. So the good 
goes with the bad. It is a pity we have not a moral 
flail ; but, as of old, the tares and the wheat are too in- 
tricately intermingled for human art to separate them. 
I promised to spare you the churches of Cologne, but 
I cannot pass by the Cathedral. It would be as bad as 
the proverbial leaving out Hamlet from the enacting 
of his own tragedy. The Cologne Cathedral is not, 
and probably never will be, finished. It impressed 
me anew with a conviction of the immortality of the 
human mind. What an infinite distance between its 



COLOGNE. 145 

conceptions and the matter on which it works ! A 
work of art rises in vision to the divinely-inspired 
artist; what years, what ages are consumed in ex- 
pressing in the slow stone this conception ! and the 
stone is transformable, perishable. Can the mind 
be so? 

The name of the architect of the Cathedral of 
Cologne is unknown. No matter ; here are his 
thoughts written in stone. 

You cannot see the Gothic architecture of Europe 
without being often reminded of Victor Hugo's idea 
that architecture was, till superseded by printing, 
"the great book" wherein man wrote his thoughts in 
" marble letters and granite pages ;" and, being once 
possessed with this notion, you cannot look at the 
beautiful arches and columns, at such stupendous 
flying buttresses as these of the Cologne Cathedral, 
and its " forest of purfled pinnacles," without feel- 
ing as if you were reading a Milton or a Dante. 
There are innumerable expressions that you cannot 
comprehend, but, as your eye ranges over them, you 
read the rapturous praises of a David, and prophecy 
and lamentation, and, even in these sacred edifices, 
the keen satires and unbridled humour of the pro- 
fane poets. Victor Hugo says that, at one period, 
whoever was born a poet became an architect ; that 
all other arts were subservient to architecture, all 
other artists the servants of the architect, " the great 
master workman."* 

I do not know that the ideas which he has so well 

* " L'architecte, le poete, le maitre totalisait en sa personne la 

Vol. I.— N 



24t* BONN. 

elaborated originated in his own mind, nor can I tell 
whether this wondrous art would have suggested the 
idea to my mind without his previous aid. We see 
by the bright illumination of another's mind what 
the feeble light of our own would never reveal ; but 
remember we do as certainly see. 

The Apostles' Church here is exquisitely beauti- 
ful. Mr. Hope said it reminded him of some of the 
oldest Greek churches in Asia Minor ; and that, when 
looking at the east end, he almost thought himself 
at Constantinople ; and, though you may think me 
bitten by Victor Hugo's theory, I will tell you that 
its romantic and Oriental beauty brought to my 
mind "The Talisman," in Scott's Tales of the Cru- 
saders. 






My dear C, 
Bonn. — We embarked, for the first time, yesterday 
on the Rhine, the " father and king of rivers," as 
the German poets with fond reverence call it. " The 
majestic Rhine" it has not yet appeared to us, hav- 
ing but just come opposite to the Sichengebirge, a 
cluster of mountains where the scenery first takes its 
romantic character. W T e were four hours, in a good 
steamer, getting to Bonn, a distance of about twen- 
ty miles. This slow ascent of the river is owing to 
the force of the current. We were much struck 
with the social, simple, and kindly manners of our 

sculpture qui lui ciseleait ses facades, la peinture qui lui enluminait 
ses vitraux, la musique qui mettait sa cloche en branle et soufflait 
dans ses orgues." — Victor Hugo. 



BONN. 147 

German companions in the steamer. Several well- 
bred persons addressed us and asked as many ques- 
tions as a Yankee would have asked in the same 
time. Some of them made us smile, such as wheth- 
er the language in America was not very like that 
spoken in England ! and if New-York had more 
than thirty thousand inhabitants ! Before we sep- 
arated the girls were on familiar terms with some 
pretty young ladies going to boarding-school, and 
half a dozen people, at least, had ascertained whence 
we came and whither we were going. M. was 
quite charmed with this unreserve. " Like to like," 
you know ! 

There was a lady on board who riveted our at- 
tention. Without being handsome, she had the 
" air noble" that is, perhaps, the best substitute for 
beauty. Her face was intellectual, and her eyes 
such as I have never seen except in the head of a 
certain harpy eagle in the zoological gardens. Lest 
you should get a false impression from this compar- 
ison, I must tell you that these harpy eyes haunted 
me for days after I saw them reviving, with their 
human expression and wonderful power, my child- 
ish superstition about the transmigration of souls. 

"That woman is very ill-bred," said M., "to 
peer at us so steadily through her eyeglass." " We 
look at her just as steadily, only without eye- 
glasses," said L. ; and, as none think themselves 
ill-bred, we came to the silent conclusion that the 
stranger might not be so. There was something in 
her air, and in a peculiarity, as well as elegance of 



148 BONN. 

dress, that indicated she felt well assured of her 
position. 



Bonn. — We brought letters to the celebrated 
Schlegel, who resides here, and to a certain Ma- 
dame M. Schlegel sent us a note, saying he was 
kept in by indisposition, but would be most happy to 
receive us. Soon after breakfast Madame M. was 
announced, and proved to be the harpy-eyed lady of 
the steamer. Her manner struck me as cold, and I 
felt all the horror of thrusting myself on involuntary 
hospitality. " She is doing a detestable duty," 
thought I, " in honouring Mrs. 's letter of cred- 
it in behalf of strangers from a far country, and of 
a language that she does not speak." By degrees 
her manner changed from forced courtesy to volun- 
tary kindness. She marked out occupation for all 
our time at Bonn, lavished invitations on all our par- 
ty, and insisted on my going home with her to see 
what was to be seen at her house, which, she said, 
in a way to excite no expectation, " was better than 
staying at the inn." I went, and found that she had a 
superb establishment in the best quarter of the town. 
We met a pretty young woman on the stairs, whom 
she introduced to me as her daughter. She had her 
long sleeves tucked up over her elbow, and a cotton 
apron on, and reminded me of a thrifty New-Eng- 
land lady preparing to make her "Thanksgiving 
pies." Mademoiselle M. soon after brought in a 
small waiter, with rich hot chocolate and cakes. I 



BONN. 149 

asked Madame M. if the accounts we had received 
of the domestic education of women in Germany of 
the condition of her daughter were true. She said 
yes; they were taught everything that appertained 
to house-affairs. We know they do not find this 
domestic education incompatible with high refine- 
ment and cultivation. Knowledge of house-affairs 
is a necessity for our young countrywomen — per- 
haps some of them would think it less an evil if 
they could see Mademoiselle M. in her luxurious 
home expressing, as did Eve, Penelope, and other 
classic dames, by the dainty work of her own hands, 
that she was " on hospitable thoughts intent." 

When I entered Bonn through an ineffably dirty 
street, I little dreamed it could contain a house with 
the lovely view there is from Madame M.'s window, 
of gardens and cornfields ; and much less did I an- 
ticipate sitting with that fearful lady of the steamer 
over cases of antique gems — some as old as remote 
epochs of Grecian art — while she expounded them 
to me ; so at the mercy of accident are the judg- 
ments of tourists. Madame M.'s house is filled with 
productions of the arts, pictures, busts, &c, which I 
was obliged to leave all too soon to go with my par- 
ty to pay our respects to Schlegel ; and I went, half 
wishing, as L. did on a similar occasion, that there 
were no celebrated people that one must see. 

Schlegel is past seventy, with an eye still brill- 
iant, and a fresh colour in his cheek. He attracted 
our attention to his very beautiful bust of Carrara 
marble, and repeatedly adverted to the decay of the 

N2 



150 BONN. 

original since the bust was made, with a sensibility 
which proved that the pleasures and regrets that ac- 
company the possession of beauty are not limited to 
women. He makes the most of his relics by wear- 
ing a particularly becoming black velvet cap, round 
which his wavy white locks lay as soft as rays 
of light. He was courteous and agreeable for the 
half hour we passed with him ; but I brought away 
no new impression but that I have given you, that 
he is a handsome man for threescore and ten. 

At three Madame M. came, according to appoint- 
ment, to show us the Bonn lions and surroundings. 
We drove first to the University, which is the old 
electoral palace. Bonn was comprehended within 
the Electorate of Cologne. The facade of this pal- 
ace of the lord elector, which has now become a 
flourishing seat of learning, is nearly a quarter of a 
mile in extent. The palaces and cottages of Europe 
indicate its history. 

The University, which has now between eight and 
nine hundred students, was established by the King 
of Prussia, and is said to owe its reputation to its 
distinguished professors ; Niebuhr was here, and 
Schlegel is. We were shown a library of one hun- 
dred thousand volumes, a museum of natural his- 
tory, and a very interesting museum of Roman re- 
mains found on the banks of the Rhine, altars, va- 
ses, weapons, &c. We were conducted through the 
botanical garden by Monsieur PInspecteur, a cel- 
ebrated botanist, and one of a large family of 
brothers devoted to the science. " Une aristocracie 




BONN. 151 

botaniste," said Madame M. He showed us a rich 
collection of American plants, and I stood amid the 
mosses and ferns, my old friends of the ice-glen, 
feeling very much as if I ought to speak to them as 
they did to me ! 

We drove, by a road that reminded me of the 
drives through the Connecticut River meadows, to 
Godesberg. There was one pretty object, the like 
of which we shall never see in our Puritan land — a 
high and beautifully-carved stone cross. It marked 
the spot where two cavaliers — brothers — fought for 
their lady-love, and the unhappy surviver erected 
this cross, hoping the passers-by would stop to say 
a prayer for the soul of his brother. 

There is a cluster of hotels at Godesberg, and 
some villas belonging to the Cologne noblesse ; it 
is a favourite summer retreat. We went to see the 
ruins of the Castle of Godesberg. They crown an 
isolated mount, which looks, in the midst of the sur- 
rounding level, as if it were artificial ; but it is one 
of those natural elevations which, being castellated 
and strongly fortified, make up so much of the ro- 
mantic story of the middle ages, and, with their ru- 
ins, so much of the romantic embellishment of the 
present day. This Castle of Godesberg has its love 
story, and a true and tragic one. It was here that 
the Elector of Cologne who married Agnes of 
Mansfeldt held out against his Catholic enemies. 
His marriage made his conversion to Protestantism 
somewhat questionable ; and the separation and mis- 
ery in which the unhappy pair died was probably 



152 BONN. 

interpreted into a judgment on these two apostate 
servants of the Church. It has been one of the pu- 
rest of summer afternoons, and we had a delicious 
stroll up to the ruins; a world of beauty there is 
within the small compass of that mount. Fancy a 
hill rising from the bosom of meadows as our Laurel 
Hill does, but twice as high and twice as steep, with 
a path winding round it, every foot of cultivable 
earth covered with grape-vines, having shrines chis- 
elled in the rocks, and crucifixes and madonnas for 
the devout. Half way up is a little Gothic church 
and a cemetery, where the monuments and graves — 
yes, old graves — were decked with fresh garlands, the 
lilies and roses that have blown out in this day's 
sun. Is not this a touching expression of faith and 
love — faith in Qod, and enduring love for the de- 
parted ? 

What a picture was the country beneath us, and 
what a pretty framework for the picture, the stone 
arches of the old castle! The earth was washed 
clean by the morning showers. Beneath us was an 
illimitable reach of level land covered with crops. 
The harvesting and hay-making just begun, but not 
a blade yet taken orT the piled lap of mother earth. 
At our feet were the peasants' dwellings, little 
brown cottages, almost hidden in fruit-trees; beyond, 
the gay villas of the noblesse ; and still farther, the 
lively-looking town of Bonn, with its five-towered 
Cathedral. Still farther, on one side Cologne, on 
the other the seven mountains, with the ruins of 
Drachenfels ; fine wide roads — those unquestionable 



BONN. 153 

marks of an old civilization — traversing the country in 
every direction, and, as far as your eye could reach, 
that king of roads, the Rhine. 

Madame M. so fully enjoyed the delight she was 
bestowing, that she proposed to prolong it by an ex- 
cursion to-morrow, w T hich shall be still richer in ro- 
mance. She will come at ten with two carriages. 
We shall take our dejeuner a lafourchette here, and 
then drive to Roland's Castle, then pass to the monas- 
tery of Nonenworth, where, her son officiating as 
chaplain she proposes to make a nun of Miss K., all 
to end in a dinner, for (I must tell you the disen- 
chanting fact) the monastery is converted into an 
inn. This is too pleasant a project to be rejected, 
and if — and if — and if — why we are to go. 

While enjoying to-day and talking of to-morrow, 
we had returned to the inn. Tea was preparing at 
the order of our charming hostess. Dispersed about 
the house and piazza were coteries of German ladies, 
who had come out for the afternoon, and were knit- 
ting and gossipping most serenely. 

Our repast was very like a home tea for a hungry 
party of pleasure, with the agreeable addition to 
our cold roast fowl and Westphalia ham and straw- 
berries, of wine, melons, and Swiss cheese. 



My Dea.r C, 
To-day has played a common trick with yester- 
day's project — dispersed it in empty air. Compell- 
ed to proceed on our journey, we did not lose the 



154 BONN. 



r>« 



highest pleasure we had counted on — Madame M.'s 
society. She stayed with us to the last moment, 
and then, when saying farewell, a kind impulse 
seized her ; she sent her footman back for her cloak, 
and came with us as far as Andernech, where she 
has one of her many villas. This was just what L. 
M. would have done on a similar occasion ; but how 
many of these incidental opportunities of giving 
pleasure, these chance-boons in the not too happy 
way of life, are foregone and — irretrievable ! 

At Bonn the romantic beauty of the Rhine begins. 
I have often heard our Hudson compared to the 
Rhine ; they are both rivers, and both have beautiful 
scenery ; but I see no other resemblance except so 
far as the Highlands extend, and there only in some 
of the natural features. Both rivers have a very 
winding course, and precipitous and rocky shores. 
But remember, these are shores that bear the vine, 
and so winding for forty miles that you might fancy 
yourself passing through a series of small lakes. I 
have seen no spot on the Rhine more beautiful by 
Nature than the Hudson from West Point; but 
here is 

* c A blending of all beauties, streams, and dells., 
Fruits, foliage, erag, wood, cornfield, mountain, vine, 
And chiefless castles breathing stern farewells, 
From gray but leafy walls, where Ruin greenly dwells." 

Read Byron's whole description in his third canto 
of Childe Harold, of this " abounding and exulting 
river," and you will get more of the sensation it is 
fitted to produce than most persons do from actually 



COBLENTZ. 155 

seeing it. Its architecture is one of its characteristic 
beauties ; not only its ruined castles — and you have 
sometimes at one view three or four of these stern 
monuments on their craggy eminences — but its pret- 
ty brown villages, its remains of Roman towers, its 
walls and bridges, and its military fortifications and 
monuments : 

" A thousand battles have assailed its banks," 

and have sown them richly with their history. And 
every castle has its domestic legend of faithful or un- 
faithful love, of broken hopes or baffled treachery. 
Story, ballad, and tradition have breathed a soul into 
every tumbling tower and crumbling wall. 



We passed the night at Coblentz. The Romans 
called it Confluentes, "modernized into Coblentz, 
from its situation at the confluence of the Mosel and 
the Rhine. It is the capital of the Rhenish provin- 
ces of Prussia, and its population, together with that 
of Ehrenbreitstein, including the garrison, is about 
22,000." Thank our guide Murray for the above 
well-condensed paragraph, containing more infor- 
mation than half a dozen pages of my weaving. 

The younger members of our party, including 
myself, were enterprising enough to quit our luxu- 
rious and most comfortable apartments at the Belle- 
vue at five o'clock, to go to the fortress of Ehrenbreit- 
stein ("Honour's broad stone," is it not a noble 
name ?). 



156 COBLENTZ. 

We passed the Rhine on a bridge of boats, and 
followed a veteran Austrian soldier, who was our 
valet de place, to the fortified summit. It has 
been from the time of the Romans a celebrated 
military post. Byron saw and described it after 
it had been battered and dismantled by the French, 
and not as it now is, capable of resisting, on the 
word of Wellington, " all but golden bullets." It 
only yielded to famine when the French besieged 
it. The Prussians have made it stronger than ever, 
at an expense of five millions of dollars ! So the 
men of toil pay for the engines that keep them 
mere men of toil. 

The works struck me as appallingly strong, but, 
as I could not comprehend their details, after our 
guide had told me there were magazines capable of 
containing a ten years' supply of food for 8000 men, 
that there were cisterns that would hold a three years' 
supply of water, and, when that was exhausted, 
the Rhine itself could be drawn on by a well which 
is pierced through the solid rock ; when I had got 
all this available information, I turned to what much 
better suited me, the lovely view. Oh, for my magic- 
mirror to show you how lovely looked, in this morn- 
ing light, the scene below us; the blue Moselle coming 
down through its vine-covered hills, towns, ruins, 
villas, cottages, and the Rhine itself, " the charm of 
this enchanted ground I" I think I like it the better 
that it is frozen three months in the year. This 
seems to make it a blood-relation of our rivers. You 
cannot imagine how much the peasant girls in their 



WIESBADEN. 157 

pretty costumes embellish these surroundings. They 
do not wear bonnets, but, in their stead, an endless 
variety of headgear. Some wear a little muslin 
cap or one of gay-coloured embroidery, and others a 
sort of silver case that just encloses the long hair, 
which is always braided and neatly arranged. 



Did you know that the prince of diplomatists and 
arch-enemy of liberty, Metternich, was born at Co- 
blentz? We have just been to see a fountain, on 
which is an inscription commemorative of the French 
invasion of Russia. It was put there by the French 
prefect of the department, and a few months after, 
when the Russians passed through here in pursuit of 
the scattered army of Napoleon, their commander 
annexed the following happy sarcasm: "Vu et ap- 
prouve par nous commandant Russe," &c. (Seen 
and approved by us, the Russian commander.) 



Wiesbaden, Poste Restante, July 26. 

K. and I came here this morning to purvey for the 
party, and get lodgings for a month or two. The 
best hotels were full. We were shown disagreeable 
rooms at the Poste, and though the man assured us 
he could not keep them for us ten minutes, as all 
the world was rushing to Wiesbaden, we took our 
chance, and hazed about the streets, finding nothing 
that we liked. At last I made inquiry in a book- 
shop, and a good-natured little woman entering into 

Vol. I.— 



158 WIESBADEN. 

our wants, ran across the street with us, and in five 
minutes we had made a bargain with a man whose 
honest German face is as good security as bond and 
mortgage. We have a very nice parlour and three 
comfortable rooms for thirty-five florins a week — 
about fourteen dollars. We pay a franc each for 
breakfast, for tea the same, and we have delicious 
bread, good butter, and fresh eggs ; for our dinners, 
we go, according to the custom here, to the table 
d'hote of a hotel. We could not get as good accom- 
modations as these in a country town at home for the 
same money, nor for double the sum at a watering- 
place. 



My dear C, 

Sunday evening. — We have been here now more 
than a week, and, with true traveller's conceit, I am 
sitting down to give you an account of the place 
and its doings. Wiesbaden (Meadow-baths) is the 
capital of the duchy of Nassau, about two miles 
from the Rhine. It is a very old German town, and 
was resorted to by the Romans. It may be called 
the ducal residence, as the duke, in natural defer- 
ence to his fair young wife's preference, now resides 
here a good portion of the time, and is building a 
large palace for the duchess. 

Wiesbaden has more visiters than any of the 
numerous German bathing -places. The number 
amounts to from twelve to fifteen thousand annually, 
and this concourse is occasioned by the unrivalled 
reputation of its mineral-water At six this morn- 



WIESBADEN. 159 

ing we went to the Kochbrunnen (boiling spring). 
There is a small building erected over it, and a 
square curb around it, within which you see it boil- 
ing vehemently. Its temperature is 150° Fahren- 
heit. Its taste is often compared to chicken-broth. 
If chicken-broth, it must have been made after 
the fashion of Dr. T.'s prescription to his hypochon- 
driac patient, who fancied water-gruel too strong 
for her digestion : " Eight gallons of water, madam, 
and the shadow of a starved crow !" 

From six to eight the water-drinkers did their 
duty, drinking faithfully. Some read or lounged in 
a sunny corridor where a band of musicians were 
stationed playing gay tunes ; but the approved fash- 
ion is to saunter while you sip. We were mere 
lookers-on, and it was ludicrous to see these happy- 
looking Germans, whom it would seem Heaven had 
exempted from every evil flesh is heir to, save obe- 
sity, come down to the spring with their pretty Bo- 
hemian glasses of all colours and shapes, walk back 
again up the long acacia walks, sipping in good 
faith, and giving the water credit, no doubt, for do- 
ing what, perhaps, might be done without it by their 
plentiful draughts of the sweet early morning air. 

After breakfast I went to the window, and here 
are my notes of what I saw. "How freshly 
the windows are set out with flowers. Our oppo- 
site neighbour has new-garnished her little shop- 
window with fresh patterns of calico, and scarfs, 
fichus, and ribands. Tw t o girls are standing at the 
next door-step, knitting and gossiping ; and at the 



160 WIESBADEN. 

next window sits the selfsame pretty young wom- 
an that I saw knitting alone there all last Sunday. 
It is a happy art that distils contentment out of a 
passive condition and dull employment. The street 
is thronging with fair blooming peasant-girls come 
into town to pass their Sunday holyday. How 
very neat they look with their white linen caps and 
gay ribands, and full, dark-blue petticoats, so full 
that they hang from top to bottom like a fluted 
ruffle. The bodice is of the same material, and 
sets off in pretty contrast the plaited, snow-white 
shift-sleeve. There are the duke's soldiers mingling 
among them ; their gallants, I suppose. Their de- 
portment is cheerful and decorous. 

" Here is a group of healthy-looking little girls in 
holyday suit, their long, thick hair well combed, 
braided, and prettily coiled, and a little worked 
worsted sack hanging over one shoulder. The vis- 
iters of Wiesbaden — German, Russian, English — 
are passing to and fro; some taking their Sunday 
drive, some on foot. Beneath my window, in a 
small, triangular garden, is a touching chapter in 
human life ; the whole book, indeed, from the be- 
ginning almost to the end. There is a table under 
the trees in the universal German fashion, and wine 
and Seltzer-water on it ; and there, in his armchair, 
sits an old blind man, with his children, and grand- 
children, and the blossoms of yet another generation 
around him. While I write it, the young people are 
touching their glasses to his, and a little thing has 
clambered up behind him and is holding a rose to 
his nose." 



WIESBADEN. 161 

If you recollect that we are now in Protestant 
Germany, you will be astonished at the laxity of the 
Sabbath. The German reformers never, I believe, 
undertook to reform the Continental Sabbath. They 
probably understood too well the inflexible nature 
of national customs, and how much more difficult it 
is to remodel them than to recast faith. We are ac- 
customed to talk of " the horrors of a Continental 
Sabbath," and are naturally shocked with an aspect 
of things so different from our own. But, when I 
remember the dozing congregations I have seen, the 
domestics stretched half the heavy day in bed, the 
young people sitting by the half-closed blind, steal- 
ing longing looks out of the window, while the Bible 
was lying idle on their laps ; and the merry shouts 
of the children at the going down of the sun, as if 
an enemy had disappeared, it does not seem to me 
that we can say to the poor, ignorant, toil-worn 
peasant of Europe, " I am holier than thou !" 



I left my journal to go to church. At all these 
Continental resorts there is service in English, and 
here the duke permits it to be held in his own 
church. The service was performed by a clergy- 
man of the Church of England. 

At four o'clock we set off for our afternoon w T alk. 
The gay shops in the colonnade were all open, 
but there were few buyers, where buyers most do 
congregate, at the stalls of the all-coloured, beau- 

2 



162 WIESBADEN. 

tiful Bohemian glass, and of the stag-horn jim- 
cracks so curiously carved by the peasants; even 
Monsieur Jugel's bookshop was deserted. The Eng- 
lish are, for the most part, the buyers, and they do 
not buy on Sunday. We went into the Kur-Saal 
Garden, which at this hour is alive with people, 
hundreds sitting at their little tables on the gravelled 
area between the hall and a pretty artificial lake, 
smoking, sipping coffee, wine, and Seltzer-water, and 
eating ices. A band of capital musicians were play- 
ing. We had some discussion whether we should 
go into the Kur-Saal, and finally, determining to see 
as much as we womankind can of what characteri- 
zes the place, we entered. The Kur-Saal (cure-hall) 
belongs to the duke, and its spacious apartments are 
devoted to banqueting, dancing, and gambling. 
The grand saloon is a spacious apartment with rows 
of marble pillars, and behind them niches with stat- 
ues, alternating with mirrors. It was an odd scene 
for us of Puritan blood and breeding to witness. A 
circular gambling-table in the midst of the apartment 
was surrounded with people five or six deep, some 
players but more spectators. The game was, I be- 
lieve, roulette. It was most curious to see with what 
a cool, imperturbable manner these Germans laid 
down their gold, and won or lost, as the case might 
be, on the instant. There were not only old and 
practised gamblers, but young men, and people ap- 
parently of all conditions, and among them women, 
ladies. These are a small minority, seldom, as I am 
told,, more than half a dozen among a hundred men. 



WIESBADEN. 163 

I watched their faces ; they looked intent and eager, 
but I did not, with their change of fortune, detect any 
change of colour or expression. We walked through 
the smaller rooms, and found in all gambling-tables 
and players in plenty, and that where there were 
fewest spectators the passions of the players were 
more unveiled. 

This buying and selling, and vicious amusement, is 
indeed a profaning of the day when God has or- 
dained his earth to be a temple of sacred rest from 
labour, and sordid care, and competitions. When 
and where will it be so used as to do the work it 
might achieve — regenerate the world 1 

We soon emerged into the garden again, and 
were glad to see a great many more people outside 
than in. This garden, or rather, ornamented ground, 
for the greater part of it is merely in grass and trees, 
extends up the narrowing valley for two miles to the 
ruins of the old Castle of Sonnenberg. We passed 
the little lake with its fringe of bright flowers, its 
social squads of ducks and its lordly swans, and 
many a patch of bright flowers and shrubberies, and 
rustic benches with tete-a-tete pairs or family groups, 
and kept along a path by a little brook that seems 
good-naturedly to run just where it looks prettiest 
and is most wanted, till we mounted the eminence 
where the feudal castle guarded the pass between 
two far-reaching valleys, and where the old keep, 
chapel, and masses and fragments of wall still stand- 
ing, extend over a space half as large as our vil- 
lage covers. Fragments of the wall form one side 



164 WIESBADEN. 

of a range of cottages, serving a better purpose 
than when they were the bulwark of a half-savage 
warrior. 

Sonnenberg is kept in beautiful order by the duke's 
command and money. There are plantations of furze 
about the old walls, narrow labyrinthine walks en- 
closed with shrubbery and imbowered with clema- 
tis, and seats wherever rests are wanted. I unluck- 
ily disturbed a tete-a-tete to-day, which, if there be 
truth in " love's speechless messages," will make a 
deep mark in the memory of two happy-looking 
young people. 

There is a compact village nestled close under the 
ruins of the castle. Here it was that the feudal de- 
pendants of the lord lived, and here the rural popu- 
lation is still penned. These villages are picturesque 
objects in the landscape, but, on a close inspection, 
they are squalid, dirty, most comfortless places, 
wdiere the labouring poor are huddled together with- 
out that good gift — sweet air, and plenty of it, which 
seems as much their right as the birds'. 

"When I see the young ones here playing round a 
heap of manure that is stacked up before their door, 
I think how favoured are the children of the poor- 
est poor of our New-England villages — but softly — 
the hard-pressed German peasant, in his pent-up vil- 
lage, has a look of contentment and cheerfulness that 
our people have not. If his necessities are greater, 
his desires are fewer. God is the father of all, and 
these are his compensations. 

We got home to Burgh-strasse just as the last hues 



WIESBADEN. 165 

of twilight were fading from the clouds, and just as 
K. was taking off her hat she remembered that, after 
coming down from the castle, she turned aside to 
gather some flowers, and meanwhile hung her bag, 
containing sundry articles belonging to herself and 
my purse, on the railing of a bridge. What was to 
be done ? We hoped that in the dusky twilight it 
might have escaped observation. K. proposed send- 
ing for a donkey and going herself in search of it. 
I consented, being most virtuously inclined (as those 
to whom it costs nothing are apt to be) to impress 
on Miss K. a salutary lesson. The donkey came, 
and off she set, attended by Francois and followed 
by a deformed donkey driver with the poking-stick, 
and everlasting A-R-R-H, much to the diversion of 
the denizens of Burgh-strasse, who were all on their 
doorsteps looking on. She was hardly out of my 
sight before I repented sending her off with these 
foreign people into the now obscure and deserted 
walk. I thought there was an evil omen in the 
donkey boy's hump-back, and, in short, I lost all feel- 
ing for " my ducats" in apprehension for " my daugh- 
ter;" and when she returned in safety without the 
bag, I cared not for Herr Leisring's assurance " that 
it would yet be found ; that it was rare anything was 
lost at Wiesbaden." 



This morning " my ducats" rose again to their full 
value in my esteem, and just as I was pondering on 
all I might have done with them, Leisring's broad, 



166 WIESBADEN. 

charming face appeared at the door with the an- 
nouncement, " On Pa trouvee, mademoiselle" (It is 
found !), and he reiterated, with a just burgher pride, 
" rarely is anything lost at Wiesbaden." The bag, 
he says, was found by a " writer" and left with the 
police, and Leisring, the writer, and the police, all de- 
cline compensation or reward. If this abstemious- 
ness had occurred in our country, we might, perhaps, 
have thought it peculiar to it. 



I went last evening with the girls to a ball given 
every week to such as choose to attend it ; I went, 
notwithstanding Mr. — — ? s assurance (with a horror 
not quite fitting an American) that we should meet 
"Tom, Dick, and Harry there." One of the girls 
replied that " Tom, Dick, and Harry were such very 
well-behaved people here, that there was no objec- 
tion to meeting them ;" and so, fortified by the 

approbation of our English friends Miss and 

Miss -, who are sufficiently fastidious, we went. 

The company assembled in the grand saloon of the 
Kur-Saal at the indefinite hour at which our even- 
ing lectures are appointed, " early candle-lighting," 
and it was rather miscellaneous, some in full, some 
in half dress. The girls had been told it was cus- 
tomary to dance, when asked, without waiting for 
the formality of an introduction, and they were only 
too happy to obtain their favourite exercise by a 
courteous conformity to the customs of the country. 
They had partners, and very nice ones, in plenty. I 



WIESBADEN. 1 67 

was struck with the solemn justice of one youth, 
who, dispensing his favour with an equal hand, en- 
gaged the three at the same time, one for a quadrille, 
one for a gallopade, and one for a waltz. We had 
no acquaintance in the room, no onerous dignity to 
maintain ; the girls had respectful partners, plenty of 
dancing, and no fagging, as we were at home and 
in bed by eleven. 



It seems to me that Sir F. Head, in his humor- 
ous account of the German dinner, has done some 
injustice to the German cuisine. After you have 
learned to thread its mazes to the last act of its in- 
tricate plot, you may, passing by its various greasy 
messes, find the substantial solace of roast fowls, 
hare, and delicious venison, that have been pushed 
back in the course of precedence by the puddings 
and sweet sauces. These puddings and sauces are 
lighter and more wholesome than I have seen else- 
where. Indeed, the drama, after the prologue of the 
soup, opens with a tempting boiled beef, at which I 
am sure a " Grosvenor-street cat," if not as pamper- 
ed as my lord's butler, would not, in spite of Sir 
Francis' assertion, turn up his whisker. 

We dine at the Quatre Saisons, the hotel nearest 
to us, and as we are told, the best table d'hote in 
the place. There is a one o'clock, and in deference 
to the English, a five o'clock dinner. The universal 
German dinner-hour is one. The price at one is a 
florin — about forty-two cents 3 at five, a Prussian 



168 WIESBADEN. 

dollar — about seventy-five cents. This is without 
wine. We dine usually at one, but we have been 
at the five o'clock table, and we see no other differ- 
ence than the more aristocratic price of that aristo- 
cratic hour. Besides the trifling advantage of di- 
ning at one in reference to health, it leaves the best 
hours of the day free for out-of-door pleasures. The 
order and accompaniments of our dinner are agreea- 
ble ; the tables are set on three sides of a spacious 
salon a manger, with a smaller table in the centre of 
the room, where the landlord (who carves artisti- 
cally) carves the dinner. His eyes are everywhere. 
Not a guest escapes his observation, not a waiter 
omits his duty. 

When the clock is close upon the stroke of one, 
people may be seen from every direction bending 
their steps towards the hotel. You leave your hats 
and bonnets in an ante-room. The ober kelner (head- 
waiter) receives you at the door, and conducts you 
to your seats. The table is always covered with 
clean (not very fine) German table-linen, and of 
course, supplied with napkins. Pots with choice 
odorous plants in flower are set at short intervals the 
whole length of the table ; a good band of music is 
playing in the orchestra. The dinner-service is a 
coarse white porcelain. As soon as you are seated, 
little girls come round with baskets of bouquets, which 
you are offered without solicitation. You may have 
one, if you will, for a halfpenny, and a sweet smile 
from the little flower-girl thrown into the bargain. 
Then come young women with a printed sheet con- 



WIESBADEN. 169 

taining a register of the arrivals within the last three 
days, for which you pay a penny. I observe the new- 
comers always buy one, liking, perhaps, for once in 
their lives, to see their names in print. The carte a 
vin is then presented, and, if you please, you may se- 
lect an excellent Rhine wine for twenty-five cents a 
bottle, or you may pay the prices we pay at home for 
Burgundy and Champagne.* These preliminaries 
over, the dinner begins, and occupies between one 
and two hours, never less than an hour and a half. 
The meats are placed on the table, then taken off, 
carved, and offered to each guest. You see none 
of those eager looks or hasty movements that be- 
tray the anxieties of our people lest a favourite 
dish should escape. A German eats as long and 
as leisurely as Ire pleases at one thing, sure that 
all will be offered to him in turn ; and they are the 
most indefatigable of eaters ; not a meat, not a ve- 
getable comes on table which they do not partake. 
A single plate of the cabbage saturated with grease 
that I have seen a German lady eat, would, as our 
little S. said when she squeezed the chicken to death, 
have " deaded" one of our dyspeptics " wery dead 3" 
and this plate of cabbage is one of thirty varieties. 
The quiet and order of the table are admirable. The 
servants are never in a hurry, and never blunder. 
You know what angry, pathetic, and bewildering 
calls of " Waiter !" " Waiter !" we hear at our ta- 
bles. I have never heard the call of "Kelner!" 
from a German. 

* Not the hotel prices, but about one dollar and fifty cents. 

Vol. L— P 



] 70 WIESBADEN. 

I leave the table each day expecting half the peo- 
ple will die of apoplexy before to-morrow, but to- 
morrow they all come forth with placid faces and 
fresh appetites ! Is this the result of their leisurely 
eating ? or their serene, social, and enjoying tem- 
pers ? or their lives, exempt from the keen competi- 
tions and eager pursuits of ours 1 or their living out 
of doors 1 or all of these together 1 I leave you to 
solve a problem that puzzles me. 

A German, of whatever condition, bows to his 
neighbours when he sits down and when he rises 
from table, and addresses some passing civility to 
them. We are sometimes amused at the questions 
that are asked us, such as, " Whether English is 
spoken in America V 9 A gentleman asked me 
" Whether we came from New-York or New-Or- 
leans V 9 as if they were our only cities ; and another 
said, in good faith, " Of course there is^ no society 
except in New- York !" Oh, genii locorum of our 
little inland villages, forgive them ! 

We are too often reminded how far our country is 
from this. Yesterday a Russian gentleman said to 
K., " Qui est le souverain de votre pays, mademoi- 
selle V "Monsieur Van Buren est le President 
des Etats Unis." " Ah, oui. Mais J'ai entendu le" 
nom de Jackson. II est du bas peuple n'est ce 
pas?' 

" Comment s'appellent les chefs des petits arron- 
dissements V 9 * It might be salutary to such of our 

* " Who is the sovereign of your country, miss ?" " Mr. Van 
Buren is the President of the United States." "Ah, yes. But I 



WIESBADEN. 171 

people as are over anxious about what figure they 
make in foreign eyes to know they make none. 



I have been attracted to the window every morn- 
ing since I have been here by the troops of children 
passing to the public school, their hands full of 
books and slates ; the girls dressed in cheaper ma- 
terials, but much like those of our village-schools, 
except that their rich German hair is uncovered, and 
they all, the poorest among them, w T ear good stock- 
ings — so much for the universality of German knit- 
ting. Education is compulsory here as in Prussia ; 
the parent who cannot produce a good reason for the 
absence of the child pays a fine. I went into the 
girls' school nearest to us this morning. They look- 
ed as intelligent, as early developed, and as bright 
as our own children. 

They went successfully through their exercises in 
reading, geography, and arithmetic. At an interval 
in these lessons, the master, who was a grave per- 
sonage some sixty years old, took from a case a vi- 
olin and gave them a music lesson, which, if one 
might judge from the apparent refreshment of their 
young spirits, was an aliment well suited to them. 
What is to be the result of this education system in 
Germany 1 Will people, thus taught, be content- 
ed to work for potatoes and black bread 1 

We have been in search of an infant school which 
we were told was near the Poste. 

have heard the name of Jackson. He sprang from the lower class, 
did he not ?'- " Pray what is the title of the chiefs of the lesser de- 
partments V* 



172 WIESBADEN. 

We passed the Poste and lost our clew, so I re- 
sorted to my usual resource, a bookseller, who direct- 
ed me up a steep, narrow street, and told me to ask 
for the " Klein Kinder Schule." I went on, confi- 
dent in my " open sessime," but nothing could be 
more ludicrous than my stupefaction when the good 
people to whom I uttered my given words, not 
doubting that one who could speak so glibly could 
also understand, poured out a volume of German 
upon me; up — up we went, half the people in 
the street, with humane interest, looking after us, 
till we came to the window of an apartment that 
opened on to a court where the little urchins 
were seated. The appearance of visiters was a 
signal for the cessation of their studies. There 
was a general rising and rush to their plays; but 
first the little things, from two years old to six, 
carne, unbidden, to us with smiling faces, to shake 
our hands. It puzzles me as much to know how 
this quality of social freedom gets into the German 
nature, as how the African's skin became black ! If 
a stranger were to go, in like manner, among our 
school children, and they were forced forward by a 
rule, they would advance with downcast eyes and 
murky looks, as if the very demon of bashfulness 
stiffened their limbs. The infant-school is supported 
by charitable contributions, and conducted much like 
our infant-schools. The children stay all day, and 
the parent pays a kreutzer for the dinner of each — 
less than a penny. We followed them to their 
plays, and as I looked at them trundling their little 



WIESBADEN. 173 

barrows and building pyramids of gravel, and the 
while devouring black bread, I longed to transport 
them to those unopened storehouses of abundance 
which the Father of all has reserved in our untrodden 
" West" for the starved labourers of Europe. 

But they were a merry little company, and, if no 
other, they have here a harvest of contentment and 
smiles. 



Our letters came to-day ! The delay was owing 
to the change in our plans. While we were every 
day going to the poste for them they were lying 
quietly at Wildbad. This interruption of communi- 
cation with those who are bound up in the bundle 
of life with us, is one of the severest trials of a trav- 
eller. It was past eleven when we had finished 
reading them, and then I went to bed with mine un- 
der my pillow. I could as easily have gone to 
sleep if the hearts of those who wrote them had 
been throbbing there ! " Blessings on him who in- 
vented sleep !" says Sancho. " Blessings on him," 
say I, " who invented that art that makes sleep 
sweet and awaking happy !" 



Our good landlord, Leisring, is, in all exigencies, 
our " point d'appui." He has the broad, truth-tell- . 
ing German face, and a bonhomie quite his own. 
He is, in an humbler position, a Sir Roger de Co- 
verly ', and his family and numerous dependants seem 

P2 



174 WIESBADEN. 

to have as kind a master as was the good knight. 
He is a master-carpenter, and is just now employed 
in finishing off the new palace which the Duke of 
Nassau is building for his duchess, and bas twelve 
subordinates in his service — nine journeymen and 
three apprentices. To the nine journeymen, he tells 
me, he has paid, in the last four months, one thou- 
sand florins, about eleven dollars a month each, be- 
sides feeding them. The apprentices he supports, 
and gives them a trifle in money. They eat in a 
back building attached to ours. I asked leave to- 
day, while they were at dinner, to look in upon them. 
They had clean linen on their table, and everything 
appeared comfortable. They are allowed three rolls 
of brown bread for breakfast, and coffee, beer, or 
schnapps (a mixture with some sort of spirit), which- 
ever they prefer. They have soup, meat, and vege- 
tables for dinner, and soup, bread, butter, and cheese 
for supper. A florin and a half (sixty cents) pays 
for the meat for their dinner.* The best butter is 
twenty-four kreutzers (eighteen cents) a pound ; the 
rolls a kreutzer each. Vegetables are excessively 
cheap. 

There is a law in Germany compelling an ap- 
prentice, when the term of his apprenticeship is 
completed, to travel a year, to work in different 
towns, and enrich himself with the improvements 
, in his art. In each town there is an inn for these 

* The game is all taken in the duke's preserves, and is, of course, 
his property. Old venison is four kreutzers a pound ; young from 
twelve to sixteen; a hare without the skin twenty -four kreutzers 
(eighteen cents). 



WIESBADEN, 175 

travelling mechanics. After reporting himself to 
the police, he goes there and then finds employment. 
You meet these young men on the road with their 
knapsacks, and they often take off their caps and 
present them at your carriage-window, modestly ask- 
ing a halfpence. At first we were quite indignant 
at seeing such decent-looking people begging. But 
our hasty misjudgments have been corrected by the 
information that these poor youths go forth penni- 
less; that it is not considered a degradation for 
them to solicit in this way ; and that they are, in 
fact, sustained by the wayside aid of their coun- 
trymen. 



We have made another experiment of German 
society. The girls went with E. to a soiree at the 
Kur-Saal. This was a soiree musicale, that is, a 
ball beginning with a concert ; a higher entertain- 
ment, and more choice in its company than the one 
I have described to you. The only condition for ad- 
mission was the payment of a little less than a dol- 
lar for the ticket of each person. They all came 
home charmed with the young duchess, with her 
very sweet, blond beauty, simple dress, and unassu- 
ming and affable manners. They were the more 
pleased as they contrasted her with another sprig, 
or, rather, sturdy branch of a royal house : a certain 
Russian princess, who, though assuredly of a very 
coarse material, fancies herself of a choicer clay 
than the people about her. This woman, whom 



176 WIESBADEN. 

we meet everywhere, in the garden, at the table 
d'hote, and at the Kochbrunnen, is quite the noisiest 
and most vulgar person we encounter. Such a per- 
son would naturally be fastidious in her associates ; 
and her prime favourite, if we may judge from their 
constant juxtaposition, is a coloured man with wool- 
ly hair, some say from New-Orleans, others that he 
is a West Indian. I do not speak of this in any 
disrespect to him, but as a proof that colour is no dis- 
qualification in European society. 



Last night, while the fair young duchess was 
dancing at a brilliant soiree at her palace at Bie- 
berich, a courier arrived with the news of the duke's 
death of apoplexy while drinking the waters of his 
bubbles of Kissingen. Rather a startling change 
from that sound of revelry to the knell of widow- 
hood — from being the " cynosure of all eyes" to be 
the dowager stepdame of the reigning duke ! 

Our host tells us the duke was " un bon enfant" (a 
good fellow), and much beloved, and will be much 
regretted. No one can doubt that a sober, well- 
intentioned man of forty-five, who is to be succeeded 
by a boy of twenty, is a great loss to his people. 
Where power has, as here, no constitutional restric- 
tions, the people are at the mercy of the personal 
character of the sovereign. 



The good people of Wiesbaden seem to take the 



WIESBADEN. 177 

death of their political father very coolly. I see no 
demonstrations of mourning except that the bells 
are rung an hour daily, and that the music has 
ceased at our dinners and in the garden, and that 
the public amusements are stopped : a proceeding 
not likely to endear the duke's memory to the inn- 
keepers and their host of dependants, who are all in 
despair lest their guests should take their departure. 
The influx of the money-spending English is a great 
source of profit to the duchy of Nassau, so that no- 
thing can be more impolitic than this prohibition, 
which extends to Schwalbach, Slangenbad, &c. 



We have now been here more than a month, and 
I may venture to speak to you of what has been a 
constant subject of admiration to us all, the manners 
of the Germans. The English race, root and branch, 
are, what with their natural shyness, their conven- 
tional reserves, and their radical uncourteousness, 
cold and repelling. The politeness of the French 
is conventional. It seems in part the result of their 
sense of personal grace, and in part of a selfish cal- 
culation of making the most of what costs nothing ; 
and partly, no doubt, it is the spontaneous effect of 
a vivacious nature. There is a deep-seated human- 
ity in the courtesy of the Germans. They always 
seem to be feeling a gentle pressure from the cord 
that interlaces them with their species. They do 
not wait, as Schiller says, till you " freely invite" to 
" friendlily stretch you a hand," but the hand is in- 



178 WIESBADEN. 

stinctively stretched out and the kind deed ready to 
follow it. 

This suavity is not limited to any rank or condi- 
tion. It extends all the way down from the prince 
to the poorest peasant. Some of our party driving 
out in a hackney-coach yesterday, met some German 
ladies in a coach with four horses, postillions, foot- 
men in livery, and other marks of rank and wealth. 
What would Americans have done in a similar posi- 
tion ? Probably looked away and seemed uncon- 
scious. And English ladies would have done the 
same, or, as I have seen them in Hyde Park, have 
leaned back in their carriages, and stared with an 
air of mingled indifference and insolence through 
their eyeglasses, as if their inferiors in condition 
could bear to be stared at. The German ladies 
bowed most courteously to the humble strangers in 
the hackney-coach. 

Yesterday, at the table d'hote, I observed a per- 
pendicular old gentleman, who looked as if he had 
been born before any profane dreams of levelling 
down the steeps of aristocracy had entered the mind 
of man, and whose servant, in rich livery, as stiff as 
himself, was in waiting behind him, bow to the per- 
sons opposite to him as he took his seat, and to those 
on his right hand and his left. Soon after our land- 
lord came to speak to him, and familiarly and quite 
acceptably, as it appeared, laid his hand on the no- 
bleman's shoulder while addressing him. 

Soon after we came here, a gentleman with whom 
we passed a few hours in a Rhine steamer met us 



WIESBADEN. 179 

at the table d'hote. "Had I not," he said, "the 
pleasure of coming* from Bonn to Cologne with 
you ? I see one of your party is absent. She is, I 
hope, well," &c. To appreciate as they deserve 
these wayside courtesies, you should see the relent- 
less English we come in contact with, who, like 
ghosts, never " speak till they are spoken to." 

A few days since, as we were issuing from our 
lodgings, a very gentlemanly German stopped us, 
begging our pardons, and saying, " English, I be- 
lieve V' and then added, that as we appeared to be 
strangers in quest of lodgings, as he had just been, 
he would take the liberty to give us the addresses 
of two or three that had been recommended to him. 
This was truly a Samaritan — a German kindness. 
The hotel-keepers, that important class to travellers, 
often blend with the accurate performance of the 
duties of "mine host" the kindness of a friend. 
Their civility, freedom, and gentlemanliness remind 
me of my friend Cozzens and others, the best spe- 
cimens of their fraternity at home. The landlord 
often sits at the table with his guests, and, with his 
own country people, converses on terms of apparent 
equality.* 

The same self-respect blends with the civility of 
the shopkeeper. He is very happy to serve and suit 
you, but, if he cannot, he is ready to direct you 
elsewhere. Shopmen have repeatedly, unasked, sent 

* This opinion may appear to have been formed on a very slight 
acquaintance with the country. It was afterward amply confirmed 
in Germany and Switzerland, where the manners are essentially the 
same. 



180 WIESBADEN. 

a person to guide us through the intricate Continen- 
tal streets to another shop. 

The domestics are prompt, faithful, and cheerful 
in their services. There is freedom, but no presump- 
tion in their manners, and nothing of that unhappy 
uncertainty as to their exact position, so uncomfort- 
able in our people. In all these subordinate classes 
you see nothing of the cringing servility that marks 
them in England, and to which they are exposed 
by their direct dependance on their employers. 

Our English friend, Miss , who has been re- 
peatedly in Germany, and is a good observer, acqui- 
esces in the truth of my observations, and says this 
general freedom of deportment comes from people 
of all ranks freely mingling together. If so, this 
surely is a healthy influence, a natural and beneficent 
effect from an obedience to that Divine precept, 
" honour all men." Wo to those who set the breth- 
ren of one family off into castes, and build up walls 
between them so that they cannot freely grasp hands 
and exchange smiles ! 



I have just been to the poste to see our English 
friends off. Their departure is a sad epoch to us, for 
they have been our solace and delight. A curious 
scene is the " poste" in a Continental town. Here 
(and ordinarily, I believe) it has a quadrangular 
court, enclosed on three sides by a hotel and its offi- 
ces, including that for letters, and having on the 
fourth side a passage through a stone arch to the 



WIESBADEN. 181 

street. Here the public coaches arrive, and hence 
take their departure ; and here the travellers and 
their luggage are taken up and discharged. I will 
describe the scene to you precisely as I just saw it. 
Besides the diligence for Sewalback, in which our 
friends were going, and towards which the luggage 
of various passengers was converging, while that 
which exceeded the authorized weight was passing 
through the postoffice window out of the hands of 
the weighmaster, # there were private carriages arri- 
ving and departing. Some of these were elegant, 
and the horses curveting and prancing right royally, 
so that I fancied they must be carrying German 
princes, or Englishmen, who are princes all over 
Europe. 

My friend's postillion, with his yellow and black 
Nassau livery, his official band round his arm, his 
leather boots cut to a peak in front and extending 
some inches above his knee, his immense yellow 
tassel bobbing over his shoulder, was blowing his 
note of preparation from the trumpet he carries 
at his side. Fat Germans stood at the windows 
of the different stories of the hotel, smoking and 
talking to women as fat as they. There were oth- 
er Germans, inustachoed and imperturbable, coolly 
awaiting the moment of departure, meandering about 
among the carriages and barrows, with their pipes 

* The allowed weight of baggage in Germany as well as in France 
is small, thirty pounds, I think. And for the excess of this you pay 
at so high a rate, that the transportation of one's luggage often costs 
more than that of one's self. 

Vol. I— Q 



182 WIESBADEN. 

dangling from one side of their mouths, and their in- 
cessant " Ja," " Ja wohl" (yes — yes, indeed), drop- 
ping from the other. Our friend's female fellow- 
passengers, in caps without bonnets, had ensconced 
themselves in a little nook, where they were knitting 
as if they were neither part nor parcel of this stir- 
ring world. 

But what a contrast to this quietude, the English 
traveller ! You may know him by the quantity and 
variety of his luggage, by every ingenious contri- 
vance for comfort (alas ! comfort implies fixture), im- 
pregnable English trunks, travelling-bags, dressing- 
cases, cased provisions for all the possible wants 
that civilization generates, and all in travelling ar- 
mour. There is no flexibility about an Englishman, 
no adaptation to circumstances and exigencies. He 
must stand forth, wherever he goes, the impersona- 
tion of his island-home. I said his luggage betrayed 
him ; I am sure his face and demeanour do. His mus- 
cles are in a state of tension, his nerves seem to be 
on the outside of his coat, his eyebrows are in mo- 
tion, he looks, as my friend says she felt when she 
first came to such a place as this, " as if all the peo- 
ple about her were rats;" his voice is quick and 
harsh, and his words none of the sweetest, so that 
you do not wonder the Continental people have fas- 
tened on him the descriptive soubriquet of " Monsieur 
God-d— n." 

An interesting little episode to me in this bustling 
scene was Miss W., the very essence of refinement 
and English gentlewomanlinesSj running hither and 



THE RHINE. 183 

yon, settling with porters, garcons, and maitres de 
poste, while her Yorkshire maid was watching, with 
dismay, the rough handling of her lady's precious 
parcels, and Miss St. L. looking as if she did not 
care if they were all lost, if she could but save her 
friend from these rough duties, to which she is com- 
pelled by being the only one of the party who 
speaks German. 



My dear C, 

We have been waiting for fine weather, that be- 
ing an indispensable element in a party of pleasure, 
for an excursion down the Rhine, and this morning 
we set off, the girls and myself, without any attend- 
ant of mankind ; an elegant superfluity, as we are be- 
ginning to think. 

While Francois was getting our billets, we, eager 
to secure the best places in the diligence, jostled past 
the Germans, who stood quietly awaiting the con- 
ductor's summons ; and when, ten minutes after, our 
fellow-passengers were getting in, offering to one 
another precedence, the conductor came to us and 
said, "Ah, ladies, you are placed; I had allotted 
better seats for you." Was not this an appropriate 
punishment for our selfish and truly national hurry- 
ing 1 I could give you many instances of similar 
offences committed by ourselves and other travellers 
among these " live-and-let-live" people. There is a 
steam navigation company on the Rhine, who have 
three boats ascending and descending daily ; this en- 



184 THE RHINE. 

ables you to pay your passage to a certain place, and 
avail yourself of each boat or all, as suits your con- 
venience. You are at liberty, at any point you 
please, to quit the steamer, ramble for two or three 
hours on the shore, and then proceed on your expe- 
dition. We are descending the river rapidly ; the 
current runs at the rate of six miles an hour. 

The big Russian princess, who is a sort of " man 
of the sea" to us, is flourishing up and down the 
deck with two of her suite, one on each side, as if to 
guard her from contact with the plebeian world. 
Egery look and motion says " I do not love the peo- 
ple." The royal brood may wince, but they must 
submit to the democratic tendencies of the age. 
These steamers and rail-cars are undermining their 
elevations. I have not, as you know, my dear C, 
any vulgar hostility to those who are the heirs of the 
usurpations of elder times — " the accident of an ac- 
cident" — but when I see a person, radically vulgar 
like this woman, queening it among those who are 
her superiors in everything but this accidental great- 
ness, my Puritan blood and republican breeding get 
the better of my humanity. 

We are passing the chateau of Johannisberg — a 
castle of Prince Metternich, an immense white edi- 
fice which, as we see it, looks much like a Saratoga 
hotel. It is on a gently-sloping hill, covered with 
vines which confessedly produce the best Rhine 
wine. "The extent of the vineyard is," Murray 
says, "fifty-five acres. Its produce in good years 
amounts to about forty butts, and has been valued at 



THE RHINE. 185 

80,000 florins." This vineyard was formerly attach- 
ed to the Abbey of St. John ; and a genial time, no 
doubt, the merry monks had of it. Would they not 
have regarded the modern tabooing of wine as the 
ne plus ultra of heresy 1 But, poor fellows ! their 
abbey and their wine were long ago secularized, and 
have fallen into the hands of military and political 
spoilers. Napoleon made an imperial gift of these 
vineyards to Marshal Kellerman, and in 1816 they 
again changed hands, being presented to Metternich 
by the Emperor of Austria. I have drank wine 
bearing the name of Johannisberg in New-York, 
but I have been told by a person who had tasted it 
at Mettemich's table, that it is only to be found un- 
adulterated there. Murray informs us that they per- 
mit the grape to pass the point of seeming perfection 
before they gather it, believing that the wine gains 
in body by this, and that so precious are the grapes 
that those which have fallen are picked up by a 
fork made for the purpose. 



We met a countryman to-day who has been trav- 
elling through France and Italy with his sister, 
" without any language," he says, " but that spoken 
on the rock of Plymouth," which, true to his Eng- 
lish blood, he pronounces, with infinite satisfaction, 
to be the best, and all-sufficient. He is a fair speci- 
men of that class of Anglo-American travellers who 
find quite enough particulars, in which every country 
is inferior to their own, to fill up the field of their 

Q2 



186 BRAUBACH. 

observation. He has just crossed the deck to say to 
me, " I have let them know what a tall place Amer- 
ica is ; I have told them that an American steamer 
will carry 2000 people and 1000 bales of cotton, 
and go down the river and up tw T ice as fast as a 
Rhine steamer." He has not told them that a Rhine 
steamer is far superior in its arrangement and refine- 
ment to ours. These little patriotic vanities are 
pleasant solaces when one is three thousand miles 
from home — but truth is better. 



Braubach. — We arrived here at half past three, 
having passed about fifty miles of the most enchant- 
ing scenery on the Rhine. Imagine, my dear C, a 
little strip of level land, not very many yards wide, 
between the river and precipitous rocks; a village 
with its weather-stained houses in this pent-up 
space ; an old chateau with its walls and towers, and 
at the summit of the rocks, and hanging over them, 
for the rocks actually project from the perpendicular, 
the stern old Castle of Marksburg, and you have our 
present position. Murray says this castle is the 
only one of the strongholds of the middle ages that 
has been preserved unaltered, the beau ideal of an 
old castle ; and this is why we have come to see it. 
I am sitting at the window of the chateau, now the 
Gast-haus zur Phillipsburg. Under my window is 
a garden with grapes, interspersed with fruit-trees 
and flowers, and enclosed by a white paling, and fin- 
ishing at each end with the old towers of the castle- 



B R A U B A C H. 1 87 

wall. Along the narrow road between the garden 
and the river there are peasant-girls going home- 
ward with baskets of fresh-mown grass on their 
heads, followed by peasants in their dark blouses, 
* with their sickles swung over their shoulders. . Lit- 
tle boats are gliding to and fro, guided, and, as their 
ringing voices tell you, enjoyed by children. But 
here is mine host to tell us the esels are ready — the 
four asses we have ordered to take us to Marksburg. 



Of all "riding privileges," that on a donkey is 
the least. You are set on to something half cushion, 
half saddle, that neither has itself nor imparts rest. 
Though there is a semicircular rampart erected, to 
guard you from the accident of " high vaulting am- 
bition," it seems inevitable that you must fall on one 
side or the other. There is a shingle strapped to 
the saddle for the right foot, and a stirrup for the 
left ; fortunate are you if you can extricate your feet 
from both. A merry procession we had of it, how- 
ever, up the winding road to Marksburg. The 
Braubach donkeys have not had much custom of 
late, I fancy, for we ran a race, fairly distancing our 
donkey-drivers, who seemed much amused with our 
way of proceeding. The fellow who was spokes- 
man demanded, as I thought, an exorbitant price, 
and I appealed to one of his comrades, who de- 
cided that half he asked was quite enough. I 
mention this with pleasure, because it is the only 
thing of the sort we have had to complain of since 



188 BRAUBACH. 

we came into Germany. The fellow was a stranger 
and an alien from this worthy household, I am sure ; 
he had a most tm-German expression. 

The castle has been, till recently, a state-prison, 
and is now occupied by invalid soldiers. We were 
led through dark passages and up a winding stone 
staircase to the apartment where prisoners were put 
to the rack; and we were shown another gloomy 
den, where there were two uprights and a transverse 
beam, and beneath them a trap-door ; if not satis- 
fied with so much of the story as these objects inti- 
mate, you may descend and search for the bones 
which you will certainly find there! In another 
apartment are some mediocre paintings on the wall, 
done with only a gleam of light by a poor fellow 
who had thus happily beguiled weary years *of im- 
prisonment. On the whole, the castle was not so 
interesting, not nearly so striking as I expected. 
Nothing is left to indicate the rude luxury of its 
lordly masters ; its aspect is merely that of an ill- 
contrived prison. 



When we got back to the inn an old man, who 
seemed an habitue, asked us, in very good French 
(which Germans of the inferior orders never speak), 
to walk into the garden. Such a pretty garden, 
with its towers, its fragment of the old castle-wall, 
its bowers and wreaths of grapes, and such grapes ; 
oh, you would go mad if you could see them, re^ 
membering your seasons of hope and despair over 



BRAUBACH. 189 

your few frostbitten vines. The old man picked some 
plumbs, and served them to us with sylvan grace on 
a grape-leaf. We fell into conversation. He told 
me the story of his life ; it was common enough, but 
there was a gentleness and sensibility in his voice and 
expression very uncommon. He came from Alsace, 
and was travelling in this vicinity with his wife and 
only surviving child, a girl, " trying to forget home ;" 
for he had lost at short intervals his three sons, when 
his daughter was asked in marriage by a young 
man of Braubach. The parents gave their consent, 
and, wisely resolving to have but one home among 
them, he bought this old chateau, and converted it 
into the Hotel zur Phillvpsburg ; and here he and 
4 his wife have reposed under the spreading shadow 
of their ♦posterity. "I am not rich," he said, "but 
I have enough. I thought myself happy ; my 
life was gliding in the midst of my family and my 
vines; but man, with whom nothing lasts, should 
not call himself happy. Seven months ago my wife 
died" — the old man's eyes filled — " it was a sudden 
and a hard blow ; we must bow before the stroke 
of the good God ! My daughter has four children. 
I am their instructer. In my youth I was at college, 
and, afterward being engaged in commerce, I trav- 
elled : so I can teach them French, Dutch, and Ital- 
ian. Certainly I am not a severe master ; but they 
love me, and love can do more than fear. The 
youngest is sometimes too much for me. He is a 
superb boy, madame ! When I say, c Julius, come 
to your lessons !' he answers, ' Oh, it is too fine 



190 BRAUBACH. 

weather to study ; see how the sun shines^ grand- 
father> and the boys are all at play,' and away he 
goes." You may think me as garrulous as the old 
man to repeat all this to you, since I cannot send 
with it this lovely scene in twilight, harmonizing so 
well with the twilight of his closing life. 

I inquired into the condition of the poor in this 
neighbourhood. He says their poverty is extreme. 
They live on potatoes and some black bread; on 
Sunday they have, for a family, half a pound of 
meat. A woman with three or four children to sup- 
port has a florin a month allowed her. Begging is 
prohibited, but they must subsist on charity. Every 
hotel has a poors' box, of which the magistrate 
keeps the key, and comes each month to take out 
and distribute the travellers' alms.* He says that, 
whenever a poor woman of the village lies in, she 
is supplied for fifteen days from their plentiful table. 
God bless their basket and their store ! 



We left Braubach this morning. The old grand- 
father and that youngest grandchild, " a superb boy," 
truly, came to the shore with us, and we exchanged 
cordial good wishes at parting. 

As we pushed off in our little boat and looked up 
to the precipitous shore, it seemed, even while we 
gazed on them, incredible that the vines should be 
reached for cultivation there, where they hung like a 

* I have repeatedly observed these boxes affixed to the wall, and 
have been told that a German rarely passes them without a donation, 



BRAUBACH, 191 

rich drapery. The peasants, women as well as men, 
scale the precipices to dress their vines, and ev- 
ery particle of manure is carried up on their shoul- 
ders. 

In the steepest places the vines are put in baskets 
as the only way of retaining the soil about them. 
For the most part the vineyards are a series of ter- 
races or steps (we have counted from twenty to thir- 
ty) covering the face of the hill. Each terrace is 
supported by a wall from five to ten feet high. 
Murray tells us the Rhineland vinedresser is not rich, 
but generally the possessor of the vineyard he culti- 
vates. What a beautiful gift of Providence is the 
vine to the patient, contented tiller of ground that 
would produce nothing but this! and this "makes 
glad the heart of man." 

The steamer carried us past village after village 
most beautiful as seen in passing ; but again, my dear 
C, I warn you not to let this, the greenest word in 
memory, call before you wide streets, shaded court- 
yards, ample space, and all rural luxuries. A vil- 
lage here is a mass of wretched dwellings stuck 
against mouldering walls, where human existence, in 
point of comfort, is nearly on a level with the brutes ; 
in fact, the same roof often shelters all the live-stock, 
from the master to his ass. The streets are scarcely 
wide enough for a carriage to pass, and the lanes 
are but a flea's leap across — a measurement that 
naturally occurs here. But mark the compensating 
blessing ! the denizens of these dreary places, steep- 
ed to the very lips in poverty, are a smiling, kindly 
people. 



192 ST. GOAR. 

We landed at St. Goar's, in the midst of the most 
enchanting scenery of the Rhine, and in showery 
weather giving us the most favourable possible light. 
Nature, like " ladies and fine Holland," owes much 
of its effect to the right disposition of light and 
shadow. The mountains enclose this little village. 
The Mouse and the Cat, the beautiful ruins of two 
castles, are at either extremity of the view. The 
" Cat" is well stationed to watch its prey, but, con- 
trary to all precedent, the " Mouse" is said always 
to have been the strongest when they were held by 
their lords, rivals and enemies. The immense Castle 
of Rheinfels, half way up the steep behind St. Goar, 
looks, as L. says, like a great bulldog that might 
have kept all its subordinates civil. Rheinfels, as 
early as the fourteenth century, was the strongest 
hold on the Rhine. It was built by a Count 
Deither, who, secure in his power, levied tribute 
(the exclusive privilege of governments at present, 
and they, as Murray happily says, call it laying 
duties) with such unsparing cupidity that the free 
cities of Germany confederated against him, and 
not only dismantled his castle, but the other " rob- 
bers' nests", on the Rhine. 

The girls carried my carpet-bag up to the inn, 
which being rather weighty with my journal, one of 
them expressed the pious wish it "might not be so 
heavy in the reading as the carrying." On our 
way we went into a most grotesque little Catholic 
church, where an image of the good hermit who 



ST. GOAR. 193 

gave his name to the village is preserved. He looks 
like an honest German, and, though his head had 
been crowned with a fresh garland of roses last 
Sunday, and plenty of cherubs were hovering round 
him, I fancied he would have liked better a pipe in 
his mouth and a table before him, and the cherubs 
converted into garcons, to serve him with Rhine 
wine and Seltzer-water. 

We took a boy from the steps of " The Lily" to 
cross the river with us and guide us up the Schweitzer 
Thai (the Swiss Valley). We followed the path- 
way of a little brook resembling some of our mount- 
ain-haunts. Die Katz hung over our heads half 
way up a steep, which Johanne (our guide) told us 
was higher than the Lurlieburg. It may be, but 
there is nothing on the Rhine so grand as this pile 
of rocks, which look with scorn on the perishable 
castles built with man's hands. It is in the whirl- 
pool in their deep shadow that Undine, the loveliest 
of water-nymphs, holds her court. No wonder it 
requires, as says the faith of the peasants of St. Goar, 
the miraculous power of their canonized hermit to 
deliver the ensnared from her enchantments. 

We walked a mile up the valley, and loitered at 
little nooks, so walled in by the hills that we look- 
ed up to the sky as from the bottom of a well. To 
us it appeared clear and blue as a sapphire, but we 
were sprinkled with rain so sparkling that L. said 
the sun was melting and coming down in drops ! I 
amused myself with finding out as much of my little 
guide's history as could be unlocked with the talis- 

Vol. I.— R 



194 ST. GOAR. 

manic words " father," " mother," " brother," help- 
ed out with dumb show ; and I found out that he 
had one sister that was shorter than he, and one 
brother much taller, who was a soldier, and so 
would Johanne be. Against this resolution I expos- 
tulated vehemently (as a friend of William Ladd 
and a member of the Peace Society should do), but 
Johanne laughed at me ; and I doubt not, as soon as 
he has inches and years enough, he will buckle on 
his sword. 

When we got back to St. Goar the shower came 
on in earnest, and we took refuge at a jolly miller's, 
a fit impersonation of that classic character. In an 
interval of his work he was sitting over his bottle 
and cracking his jokes. We invited him to go to 
America. "No," he said, holding up his Rhenish 
and chuckling over it, " I should not get this there ; 
and, besides, all the millers that go there die !" He 
is right to cherish a life so joyous. 

The steamer came up at a snail's pace. We had 
the pleasure of finding on board one of our fellow- 
passengers in the Saint James. He had been puri- 
fying in the bubbles of Schlangenbad, which pro- 
duce such miraculous effects on the skin that Sir 
Francis Head avers he heard a Frenchman say, 
"Monsieur, dans ces bains on devient absolument 
amoureux de soi-meme !" (" One falls in love with 
one's self in these baths"). Our friend was a wit- 
ness to its recreative virtue. 



ST. G OAR. 195 

My dear C, 

I will not even name to you the beautiful pic- 
tures past which we floated. Everything is here 
ready for the painter's hand. Oberwesel, with its 
Roman tower, its turreted walls and Gothic edifices ; 
the old Castle of Schonberg, Anglice Beautiful Hill, 
where there are seven petrified maidens who were 
converted into these rocks for their stony-hearted- 
ness — fit retribution. Villages, vineyards, and ruins 
appeared and disappeared, as the mist, playing its 
fantastic tricks, veiled and unveiled them. As we 
drew near to Bingen the sun shone out, throwing 
his most beautifying horizontal beams on Rheinstein 
and other famed points of the landscape, while 
masses of black clouds, driven on by the gusty wind, 
threw their deep shadows now here, now there, as 
if (we flies on the wheel fancied) to enchant the 
senses of travellers for the picturesque. 

After much discussion with a friendly Englishman 
(an old stager in these parts) as to the comparative 
advantage of landing at Bingen or Rudesheim, we 
followed his advice and went on shore at the former 
place, where we found a cheerful welcome in the 
face of mine host of the Weisse Rosse, but no room 
in his house. This man is quite my beau ideal of a 
German innkeeper, and, but that it would take too 
much space, I should like to tell you the pains he 
took to get us rooms in another inn, and how, after 
he did get them, we reconsidered our decision and 
determined to pass the night at Rudesheim, and 



196 ST. GOAR. 

how, when we came to him with our tongues fal- 
tering with some mere pretext for being off, he just 
good-humouredly brushed aside the flimsy veil, say- 
ing, "Never mind, you choose to go, and that is 
enough ;" and proceeded to select boatmen for us, 
and to make them promise to take us down to 
Rheinstein and back again to Rudesheim at the low- 
est and a very moderate rate. Would not the world 
go on swimmingly if all strangers errant were dealt 
by as mine host of the Weisse Rosse dealt by us ? 

How would you like, dear C, to see us, your 
nearest and dearest relations, boating on the Rhine 
with men whose German even K. found it hard to 
comprehend? There would be no reason for anx- 
iety; they took us in good faith in half an hour to 
Rheinstein, or, rather, the current took us. The Cas- 
tle of Rheinstein has been restored by Prince Fred- 
eric of Prussia and refurnished, and is now supposed 
to represent the castles as they were when there was 
wassail in the hall and love in the bower. The cas- 
tle itself is the most beautiful on the Rhine. It 
is planted on a projecting rock, half way to the 
summit of a steep, and set off by a dark, rich 
woodland. It is built of stone taken from the bed 
of rock that forms its foundation, and you can scarce 
tell where nature finishes and art begins. In truth, 
the art is so perfect that you forget it. Nature seems 
to have put forth her creative power, and to have 
spoken the word that called from its mother rock this 
its indescribably beautiful and graceful offspring. 

We wound up a path of easy ascent, passed over 



ST. GOAR. 197 

a drawbridge and under a portcullis, when the ward- 
er appeared. He was a sober-suited youth, with a 
rueful countenance ; love-lorn, the girls said, point- 
ing to his hump-back and a braid of hair round his 
neck. He bowed without relaxing a muscle, and led 
us through a walled court where there were green 
grass and potted plants, and, perched, over our heads 
in niches of the rock, eagles who, it would, appear, 
but for the bars of iron before them, had selected 
these eyries of their own free-will. Our warder 
proceeded through a passage with a pretty mosaic 
pavement to the knight's hall, which is hung with 
weapons of the middle ages, disposed in regular 
figures. The ceiling is painted with knight's devices, 
and complete suits of armour, helmets, and richly- 
embossed shields hang against the wall. 

We were repeatedly assured that the furniture was, 
in truth, of the middle ages, and had been collected 
by the prince at infinite pains ; and looking at it in 
good faith as we proceeded, everything pleased us. 
There is a centre-table with an effigy in stone of 
Charlemagne, a most fantastical old clock, carved 
Gothic chairs, oak tables ; in the dining-room an in- 
finite variety of silver drinking-cups, utensils of silver, 
and of ivory richly carved, and very small diamond- 
shaped mirrors, all cracked; by-the-way, an incident- 
al proof of their antiquity. The princess' rooms, 
en suite, are very prettily got up; her sleeping- 
room has an oaken bedstead of the fourteenth cen- 
tury, with a high, carved foot-board like a rampart, 
and curtains of mixed silk and woollen. In the 

R2 



198 6T. G OAR. 

writing-room are beautiful cabinets of ivory inlaid, 
and wood in marquetrie — that is, flowers represented 
by inlaying different coloured woods. 

In the working-room was a little wheel, which 
made me reflect with envy on the handiwork of our 
grandames, so much more vivacious than our stitch- 
ing. You will probably, without a more prolonged 
description, my dear C, come to my conclusion that 
Rheinstein bears much the same resemblance to a 
castle of the middle ages that a cottage ornee does 
to a veritable rustic home. I imagined the rough 
old knights coming from their halls of savage power 
and rude luxury to laugh at all this jimcrackery. 

The prince and princess make a holyday visit 
here every summer, and keep up this fanciful retro- 
cession by wearing the costume of past ages. The 
warder maintained his unrelenting gravity to the 
last. "Man pleased him not, nor woman either," 
or I am sure my laughing companions would have 
won a smile. 

We found going up the river quite a different af- 
fair from coming down. Our oarsmen raised a rag- 
ged sail. The wind was flawy, and we were scared ; 
so they, at our cowardly entreaties, took it down, 
and then, rowing the boat to the shore, one of the 
men got out, and fastening one end of a rope to our 
mast and the other round his body, he began toil- 
somely towing us up the stream. Our hearts were 
too soft for this, so we disembarked too, and walked 
two miles to " The Angel" at Rudesheim ; an angel 
indeed to us after this long day of — pleasure. 



NIEDERWALD. 199 

Friday. Rudesheim. — This morning we set off 
on an excursion to the Niederwald, the " Echo," 
"The Temple," "The Enchanted Cave," and the 
Rossel. Now, let your fancy surround you with 
the atmosphere of our cool, bright September days, 
and present the images of your friends, mount- 
ed on asses, winding up steep paths among these 
rich Rudesheim vineyards, which produce some 
of the finest wines on the Rhine. See our four 
esel-meisters slowly gossiping on after us, and our 
path crossed, ever and anon, with peasant wom- 
en emerging from the vineyards with baskets on 
their heads, piled with grape-cuttings, and weeds 
to feed the asses, pigs, or — children ! See us passing 
through the beech and oaken wood of the Nieder- 
wald, and coming out upon the "Temple" to look 
down on the ruins of the Castle of Bromser, amid a 
world of beauty, and think upon its old Jephtha- 
lord who, when a captive among the Saracens, 
vowed, if he returned, to devote his only daughter 
Gisela to the church — of poor Gisela, who had de- 
voted herself to a human divinity, and, finding her 
crusading father inexorable, threw herself from the 
tower of the castle into the river. With the clear 
eye of peasant faith, you may see now, of a dark 
and gusty night, the pale form of this modern Sap- 
pho, and you may hear her wailings somewhere 
about Hatto's Tower. 

Next see us emerging from our woodland path, 
and taken possession of by a very stout woodland 



200 NIEDERWALD. 

nymph, who has the showing of the Bezauherte 
Hole (Enchanted Cave) ; but, no ; you shall not see 
that with our eyes, but read Sir Francis Head's de- 
scription of it, which proves that, if he has any right 
to designate himself as " the old man," time has not 
done its sad work in abating the fervours of his ima- 
gination. He has made a prodigious bubble of this 
cave. His " subterranean passage" was, to our dis- 
enchanted vision, but a walled way on upper earth ; 
and where he looked through fissures of the rock, 
we had but the prose of windows, whose shutters 
were slammed open by our Dulcinean wood-nymph. 
But never mind! long may he live to verify the fan- 
tastical figure in the vignette to the Frankfort edi- 
tion of his charming work, to walk over the world 
blowing bubbles so filled with the breath of genius 
and benevolence that they diffuse sweet odours 
wherever they float. 

See us now standing at the Rossel, looking with 
the feeling of parting lovers at the queenly Rhein- 
stein sitting on her throne of Nature's masonry — at 
a long reach of the river up and down — at the love- 
ly Nahe ; not merely at its graceful entrance into the 
Rhine, but far, far away as it comes serenely gliding 
along its deep-sunken channel from its mountain- 
home — at Drusus' bridge, with its misty light of an- 
other age and people — at the massy ruin of Ehren- 
fels under our feet — at the Mouse Tower of old 
Bishop Hatto on its pretty island — at vineyards with- 
out number — at hills sloping to hills, at the green 
ravines between them, and the roads that traverse 



THE RHINE. 201 

them — at villages, towers, and churches ; and, final- 
ly, at our little hamlet of Rudesheim, which, with 
its 3500 people, is so compact that it appeared as if I 
might span it with my arms. And remember that 
into all this rich landscape, history, story, ballad, 
and tradition have breathed the breath of life. Do 
you wonder that we turned away with the feeling 
that we should never again see anything so beauti- 
ful 1 thank Heaven, to a scene like this " there 
can be no farewell !" 

We were delighted on getting down to "the 
Angel" to see the " Victoria" puffing up the Rhine ; 
for, to confess the truth, now that the feast of 
our eyes and imaginations was over, we began to 
feel the cravings of our grosser natures. There is 
no surer sharpener of the appetite than a long 
mountain-ride in a cool morning. The Niederwald, 
the Hohle, the Rossel, all were forgotten in the vis- 
ion of the pleasantest of all repasts — a dinner on the 
deck of a Rhine steamer. It was just on the stroke 
of one when w T e reached the Victoria. The table 
was laid, and the company was gathering with a 
certain look of pleased expectation, and a low mur- 
mur of sound much resembling that I have heard 
from your barnyard family when you were shelling 
out corn to them. The animal nature is strongest 
at least once in the twenty-four hours ! The Russian 
princess was the first person we encountered. " Mon- 
sieur Tonson come again." " We'll not have a seat 
near her," I whispered to the girls, as, with some 
difficulty, we doubled the end of the table which her 



202 THE RHINE. 

enormous royal person occupied. " No ; farthest 
from her is best," said K. ; so we proceeded to the 
other extremity of the table, where we were met by 
the head-waiter. " Places for four, if you please," 
said I. He bowed civilly, was " very sorry, but 
there was no room." " Surely you can make room !" 
" Impossible, madame !" A moment's reflection con- 
vinced me that a German would not risk the com- 
fort of one guest by crowding in another, so I said, 
" Well, give us a table to ourselves." " I cannot ; 
it is impossible!" "What!" exclaimed the girls, 
" does he say we cannot have places 1 Do order a 
lunch, then ; I am starved," " and so am I," u and 
I." My next demand showed how narrowed were 
our prospects. " Then," said I, " I'll ask for no- 
thing more if you will give me some bread and but- 
ter and a bottle of wine !" " Afterward, afterward, 
madame," he replied, his German patience showing 
some symptoms of diminution ; " afterward lunch, 
dinner, or what you please ; but now it is impossi- 
ble." Like the starving Ugolino when he heard the 
key of the Tower of Famine turned on him, 

" Io guard ai 
Nel viso a' mie' figluoli senza far motto." 

But soon touched by their misery and urged by 
my own, I once more intercepted the inexorable 
youth, and mustering all my eloquence, I told him 
he had no courtesy for ladies, no " sentiment ;" that 
he would have to answer for the deaths of those 
three blooming young women, &c, &c. ; he smiled, 
and I thought relented, but the smile was followed 



THE RHINE. 203 

with a definitive shake of the head, and away he 
went to perform well duties divided between half a 
dozen half-bred waiters in our country. Nothing 
remained for us but to submit. In a Hudson River 
steamer (we remembered regretfully our national 
despatch) the "afterward" would have been time 
enough; at most, an affair of half an hour's wait- 
ing, but the perspective of a German's meandering 
through his " meridian" was endless. Besides, we 
were to land at Bieberich in two or three hours, so, 
" ladies most deject," we sat ourselves down in the 
only vacant place we could find, close to the head 
of the table. The people, for the most part, had 
taken their seats; here and there a chair awaited some 
loiterer, but one dropped in after another, and my 
last faint hope that, after all, the waiter would dis- 
tribute us among them, faded away. There was some 
delay, and even those seated with the sweet security 
of dinner began to lose something of their charac- 
teristic serenity. There was a low growl from two 
English gentlemen near us, and the Germans beside 
us began mumbling their rolls. " Ah," thought I, 
" if ye who have been, as is your wont, feeding ev- 
ery half hour since you were out of bed, sitting lazily 
at your little tables here, could feel ' the thorny point 
of our distress,' you surely would give us that bread !" 
The soup came, and as each took his plate, from 
the top to the bottom of the table, the shadows van- 
ished from their faces as I have seen them pass from 
a field of corn as a cloud was passing off the sun. 
" I should have been quite content," said M., meekly, 



204 THE RHINE. 

" with a plate of soup on our laps." " Yes," said 
L. in a faltering voice, " I should be quite satisfied 
with soup and a bit of bread." But away went the 
soup, no one heeding us but a fat German whose 
back was towards us, and who, comprehending our 
dilemma, felt nothing but the ludicrousness of it. He 
turned when he had swallowed his soup, and smiled 
significantly. 

Next came the fat, tender bouilli with its three 
satellites, potatoes a la maitre d? hotel, cucumbers, and 
a fat compound called " gravy." " I always relish 
the bouilli," said K., faintly. Bouilli, potatoes, and 
cucumbers were eaten in turn; a German has no 
sins of omission to answer for at table. 

Then appeared the entremets, the croquets, sausa- 
ges, tongue, the queenly cauliflower floating in butter, 
rouleaux of cabbage, macaroni, preparations of beans 
and sorrel, and other messes that have baffled all our 
investigation and guessing. 

Now, fully to comprehend the prolongation of 
our misery, you must remember the German cus- 
tom of eating each article of food presented, each 
separately, and lounging through a change of twen- 
ty plates as if eating dinner comprehended the 
whole duty and pleasure of life. " If they would 
only give us a bit of tongue !" said K., " or a cro- 
quet," said M., " or just one sausage," said L. But 
tongue, croquet, and sausage vanished within the all- 
devouring jaws, and again the emptied dishes were 
swept off, and on came salmon, tench, pike, and 
trout (served cold, and with bits of ice), and the 



THE RHINE. 205 

delicious puddings. Now came my trial. The pud- 
dings, so light, so wholesome, with their sweet in- 
nocent fruit-sauces, are always my poste-restante at 
a German dinner. But " what was I to Hecuba, or 
Hecuba to me V\ the pudding, in its turn, was all 
eaten, and our fat friend, wiping his mouth after the 
last morsel, turned round and laughed, yes, actually 
laughed ; and we, being at that point of nervous- 
ness when you must either cry or laugh, laughed 
too — rather hysterically. 

Are you tired ? I have described but the pref- 
atory manoeuvring of the light troops. Now came 
the procession of joints, mutton, veal, and venison, 
interspersed with salads, stewed fruit, calves' -foot 
jelly, and blancmanges. " Surely they might spare 
us one form of jelly," said M., " Or a blancmange," 
said K. ; but no ; meat, jelly, and all were eaten, 
and again our stout friend looked round, with less an- 
imation this time, for he was beginning to resemble 
a pampered old house-dog who is too full to bark. 
The dessert appeared : apricots, cherries, mulberries, 
pears, and a variety of confectionary. The con- 
ductor appeared, too, with the billets. " Surely," I 
said, " that is not Bieberich !" " Pardon, madame, 
we are within a quarter of an hour of Bieberich." 
"It is a gone case !" I sighed out to the girls; and, 
in truth, we arrived before the Duke of Nassau's 
heavy palace just as the company, with the most 
provoking flush of entire satisfaction, were turning 
away from the table. We had learned to appreciate 

Vol. I.— S 



206 THE RHINE. 

the virtue of those Lazaruses who, witnessing the 
feasting of the Dives, go hungry every day. 

I have given you an exact inventory of the din- 
ner, " setting down naught in malice" or in misery ; 
and when you are told that it costs but one florin 
(forty-two cents), that it is served with nice table- 
linen, large napkins, and silver forks, you must con- 
clude that provisions are cheap, and that the travel- 
ler — if he can " catch the turbot" — is a happy man 
in Germany* 

When we got into the diligence at Bieberich 
there were two neat peasant-women beside us. We 
saw the Russian princess, whose carriage had disap- 
pointed her, waddling about, attended by her suit, 
in quest of a passage to Wiesbaden. One of the 
gentlemen said to her, " The sun is hot ; it will be 
tiresome waiting," and counselled her highness to 
take a seat in the diligence. " It is quite shocking," 
she said, " to go in this way." " But there is no 
other, madame." So she yielded to necessity, and 
put her royal foot on the step, when, looking up, 
she shrunk back, exclaiming, " Comment 1 il y a 
des paysannes" (" How is this ? there are peasants 
here !") I am sure we should not have been more 
dismayed if we had been shoved in with the asses 
that carried us in the morning. We drove off; and 
when I compared this woman, with her vacant, gross 

* The Englishman goes from here to London in two days, and 
there must pay at a hotel, for the single item in his dinner of a lob- 
ster sauce to his salmon, seventy-five cents ! No wonder he " puts 
up" with Germany, 



FRANKFORT. 207 

face, her supercilious demeanour, and her Brussels- 
lace mantilla, to our peasant companions, with their 
clean, substantial, well-preserved dresses, their health- 
ful, contented, and serene faces, and their kindly 
manners, all telling a story of industry, economy, 
and contentment, I looked proudly, thankfully back 
to my country of no princesses ! Arrogance and su- 
perciliousness exist there, no doubt, but they have 
no birthright for their exercise. 



I think it is Madame de Stael who, in speaking 
of travelling as a " triste piaisir," dwells much upon 
that sad part of it, " hurrying to arrive where none 
expect you." This was not now our case. We 
were going " home to Wiesbaden," and there spar- 
kling eyes, welcoming voices, and loving hearts 
awaited us. And, don't be shocked at the unsenti- 
mentality of my mentioning the circumstance, we 
arrived in time for the five o'clock dinner at the Qua- 
tre Saisons, after having passed three days that will 
be forever bright in memory's calendar, and having 
paid for all our varied pleasures but about seven 
dollars each. Had we not them " at a bargain V 9 



FRANKFORT. 



My dear C, 
August 30. — The spell is broken and we have 
left Wiesbaden. We arrived here last evening, 
after a drive of four hours through a tame country, 



208 FRANKFORT. 

varied here and there by a brown village, a church, 
or little chapel, and the old watch-towers near the 
town, marking the limits of its territory which does 
not exceed ten English square miles. I had sup- 
posed this was a free city, and I was surprised to 
meet at the gate we entered, soldiers in the Austrian 
uniform. We should think it an odd sort of freedom 
that was protected by the forces of a foreign prince* 
The annual fair is just beginning, and the town is 
crowded, though these fairs are no longer what they 
were before the general diffusion of commerce and 
manufactures ; the introduction of railroads will 
soon put an end to them. 

We drove to six hotels before we could find a place 
to lay our heads in : this is certainly a very " triste 
plaisir" that we travellers have now and then. 

Having secured a roof to shelter us, we sallied 
forth for a walk. We went up the principal street, 
the Zeil, where the buildings are magnificent, looked 
in at the shop windows, examined the bronze im- 
ages at the fountain, and then, as if by instinct, turn- 
ing at the right places and proceeding just as far as 
was necessary, we reached the Main, which is not 
much wider than the Housatonic in our meadows. 
Returning, we went into the public gardens, which 
occupy the place of the old ramparts. This green 
and flowery belt girdling the town is a pretty illus- 

* I was afterward informed that there was an alarming efferves- 
cence among the students in 1833, which induced the Frankforters 
to call in the aid of Austria and Prussia, who have kindly since 
watched over the " tranquillity" of the city — a kind of vigilance iu 
which they excel. 



FRANKFORT. 209 

tration of turning the sword into the pruning-hook. 
The redeemed ground is laid out with economy of 
space and much taste. We passed through copses, 
groves, and parterres, and came out upon a growth 
of firs encircling a bronze bust of a benefactor who 
had contributed to this adornment. As I looked at 
the children and various other happy groups we 
passed, I wished there were some arithmetic that 
could calculate the amount of happiness produced 
by a man who originated a public garden, and set it 
off against the results of the lives of those great 
conquerors whose effigies and trophies cumber the 
earth ! 

Our first impression of Frankfort is very agreea- 
ble. It has not the picturesque aspect of the other 
Continental towns, but it is clean, with broad streets 
and modern houses, and appears lively and prosper- 
ous, as if one might live and breathe and get a living 
in it. M., true to her general preference of cleanli- 
ness and comfort to the picturesque, declares it is 
the only place she has seen since she left England 
she could be tempted to live in, while L., as true to 
her peculiar tastes, prefers the oldest, wretchedest 
German village, provided there is a ruined castle 
brooding over it, and plenty of fragments of towers, 
peasants in costume, &c. 



" Necessity is the mother of Invention." I be- 
lieve she is the mother of half our faculties, and 
so will you, dear C, when I tell you, you who 

S2 



210 FRANKFORT. 

would not trust me to buy a go-cart, that I have se- 
lected and bought to-day our travelling carriage. 
Mr. K. tells me I have good reason to be satisfied 
with my bargain, though I did not take Francois' 
advice, who said to me, as we were entering the 
coach warehouse, " No matter if you are very well 
pleased, always shake your head and say i il ne vaut 
rien 5 " (" it is good for nothing") : this is a fair speci- 
men of courier diplomacy. 



We took tea this evening with Madame . 

She has a gem of a country-house half a mile from 
town, resembling the cottage of a Boston gentle- 
man. The grounds are laid out and cultivated with 
the elaborateness of an English suburban villa. 
Madame received us at the gate, and conduct- 
ed us to seats beside a green painted table sur- 
rounded with flower-beds and under the shadow of 
fine old chestnuts. She told us her husband was in- 
duced by these chestnuts to buy the lot for a play- 
ground for his grandchildren. Then, in case of a 
shower, they must have a shelter, and he built a tea- 
room, and the shelter expanded to its present com- 
fort and elegance ; a pleasant illustration of the 

growth of a project. Madame gave us our 

choice of taking our tea in the garden, the balcony, 
or the drawing-room. The Germans seem to me to 
go into their houses as the pigeons do, only for shel- 
ter and sleep. Their gardens are, in fact, their draw- 
ing-rooms. 



FRANKFORT. 211 

After tea Madame took us a drive. We cross- 
ed the Main on a stone bridge to Sachsenhausen, a 
suburb of the town, and drove to an eminence, 
where we had a good view of the town, the river, 
and very extensive vegetable gardens. We then 
drove quite round the town, outside the public gar- 
dens. The environs are gay with summer-houses 
and gardens, now brilliant with dahlias and asters. 
Very cheerful and uniform they looked, as if each 
one had a fair portion ; not one a feast and another 
a fast, the too general condition of life in the Old 
World. On our return we passed the new library, 
with the inscription, " Studiis, libertati, reddita civi- 
tas" (" The city returned to studies and freedom") ; 
and we were beginning to feel as if we were sur- 
rounded by a home atmosphere, when we plunged 
into the Jews' quarter, so dark, narrow, and intricate 
that it reminded me of Fagan's haunts. The old 
town is very curious. The old houses have grated 
windows and massive doors, and are many stories 
high, each story projecting over that below it. The 
fronts of those which are of stone are curiously 
carved or painted in compartments. All this, in- 
deed, looked " the ancient, imperial, free city !" 

We finished the day in Madame 's box at 

the theatre, literally the day, for it was yet twilight 
when we got home. The theatre is by law closed 
at nine o'clock precisely. This very rational hour 
obviates a serious objection to the amusement* 

* The theatre at Frankfort was near our hotel, and it used to 
amuse me to see the people going to it with much the air of quiet- 



212 FRANKFORT. 

We were fortunate in seeing one of the great 
dramatic performers of Germany, Emile Devrient. 
The play was one of the Princess Amelia's ; a tale 
of domestic sorrow, as I ascertained by my interpre- 
ters. There was no scenic effect, no dramatic con- 
trivance to aid it. The scene was not once shifted 
during the play. Devrient seemed to me, as far as 
I could judge merely from his action, expression, 
and voice, to deserve the applauses showered on 
him. The playing was all natural, and the voices 
of the women marvellously sweet. Have I never 
yet remarked to you the sweet, low tone of the 
German woman's voice 1 From the cultivated ac- 
tress to your chambermaid, it is a musical pleasure 
to hear them speak. Is it an atmospheric effect, or 
the breath of a placid temper ? The latter, I 
thought, when, a moment since, my inkstand was 
overset, and the girl summoned to repair the mis- 
chief held up her hands, smiled, and uttered, in a 
lute-like tone, a prolonged g — u — t ! (good !) 



We dined to-day at Mr. Kb'ck's. He is an emi- 
nent banker here, and, from his extensive English 
connexions, is in some sort compelled to be a gen- 
eral receiver of the Continental tourists. We do 
not bank with him, and therefore have not this 

ness and sobriety that you will see an assembly collecting for a lyce- 
um lecture in a New-England village. Ladies go without any male 
attendant, and in their ordinary dress. The price of a box ticket is 
fifty -cents. The orchestra is said to be one of the best in Germany. 
Does not all this indicate a high degree of civilization ? 



FRANKFORT. 213 

claim, such as it is, upon his hospitality ; hut, for all 
that, it has been most liberally extended to us. A 
family whose hospitality is not exhausted in such a 
thoroughfare as Frankfort, must have an inexhaust- 
ible fountain of humanity. Hospitality in an iso- 
lated country residence is the mere gratification of 
the appetite of a social being ; here it is virtue. Our 
dinner-table was arranged in a manner quite novel 
to me. In the centre of the table there was a china 
vase with a magnificent pyramid of flowers, and the 
whole table was covered with fruits, flowers, wine, 
and confectionary. 

a Fruit of all kinds, in coat 
Rough or smooth rind, or bearded husk or shell." 

If you think the confectionary was not quite h, la 
Paradise, remember Milton makes Eve to "temper 
dulcet creams" " from sweet kernels pressed." Con- 
sidering her unfortunate love of delicacies, her skill, 
and the climate, nothing is more probable that in 
the " fit vessels" which Milton mentions she con- 
verted her " dulcet creams" into ice. However 
that may be, Madame K.'s table looked like a syl- 
van feast. We had the most delicious atmosphere 
of fruits and flowers, instead of being stupified with 
the fumes of meat. There was no bustle of chan- 
ging dishes, no thrusting in of servant's arms. The 
meat was carved and brought from an adjoining 
room. We had one of the very largest pineapples 
I ever saw, raised in Yorkshire !* 

* This mode of serving a dinner was, as I have said, quite novel 
to me ; but I am told that within the last few months it has become 
common inNew-York. So easily do we adopt foreign fashions I 



214 KRONTHAL. 

Kronthal. — Our decision is made, and, instead of 
being on our way to Italy, here we are, close under 
the Taurms Hills, trying the virtue of a gas-bath re- 
cently discovered. E. says you cannot turn up a 
stone with your foot in Germany without finding min- 
eral water under it. The bathing-places are innu- 
merable. The water here is very like, in its taste, 
to the Hamilton spring at Saratoga. The gas is 
conveyed in India-rubber pipes into a bathing-tub, 
in which you sit down dressed, and are shut in 
except your head. The perceptible effect is a genial 
warmth and a slight moisture. We hear marvellous 
stories of its cures. It makes the deaf hear and the 
dumb speak ; and, in short, does what all other baths 
do if you believe their believing champions. One 
rare advantage that we have here is a physician of 
excellent sense, and of a most kind and winning 
disposition ; another is, that we see the manners of 
the people of the country without the slightest ap- 
proach to foreign fashions or intermixture of foreign 
society. It is a two hours' drive to Frankfort over a 
perfectly level plain. The Frankfort gentry come 
out every day with their children and servants, and 
seem to find quite pleasure enough in sitting down 
at a table before the door and working worsted, 
knitting, smoking, drinking wine and Seltzer-water, 
sipping coffee and eating Mademoiselle Zimmer- 
mann's cakes, which are none of the most delicious. 
Her very frugal table must be rather a contrast to 
those of their luxurious homes, but I never see a wry 



KRONTHAL. 215 

face or hear a discontented word from them. Of a 
fine day the area before the door is covered with co- 
teries of people who have no amusement in com- 
mon, none but such as I have mentioned ; these suf- 
fice. They interchange smiles and bows as often as 
they cross one another's path, and thus flow down 
the stream of life without ever ruffling a feather. 

The Germans never stray beyond the gravelled 
walks around the house. Such quietude would kill 
us, so we appease our love and habit of movement 
with a daily donkey ride among the Taunus Hills or 
a walk through the lovely woodland paths. The 
famous castles of Kronberg (Crown-hill), Konistein 
(King's- stone), and Falkenstein are within a reason- 
able walk. Konistein has been an immense fortress, 
and its story is interwoven with the annals of the 
countiy. We visited the ruins yesterday. The 
girls wandered away and left me with an English 
woman, who, while I was admiring these irregular, 
romantic hills, and the sea-like plain that extends 
eastward from their base without any visible bound, 
was telling me a marvellous tale, and an " o'er-true 
one," as she believed. Some other time I will give 
you the particulars ; I have now only space for the 
catastrophe. Two American lovers, whether mar- 
ried or not no one knew, came to Konistein, mount- 
ed the loftiest part of the ruin, and, clasped in one 
another's arms, as the peasant -boy who saw them 
averred, threw themselves down. " It was from that 
old tower," said my companion; " you see how tot- 
tering it looks; they say the view is better there, 



216 KRONTHAL. 

but it is considered so unsafe that it is forbidden to 
mount it." I started up, not doubting that my girls, 
with the instinct that young people seem to have to 
get into places of peril, had gone there. I fancied 
them tumbling down after their sensible compatriots. 
I screamed to them, and was answered distinctly — 
by a well-mannered echo ! However, I soon found, 
by a little ragged boy, that they were loitering un- 
harmed about the old tower, and I got them down 
before they had time to add to the American illus- 
trations of Konistein. 

To-day we have been to Falkenstein. It is one 
of the highest summits of the Taunus, near those 
loftiest pinnacles, the Fellberg and Auld Konig. 
There is a pretty story of a knight having won a 
daughter of Falkenstein by making a carriage road 
in a single night up to the castle-w T all. The most 
sensible miracle I ever heard being required of a 
lover. The elf who lent him spades and pickaxes 
and worked with him, demanded in payment the 
fee simple of some wild woodland hereabout. I 
like this story better than that in Schiller's ballad of 
the " Lord of Falkenstein." One does not like to 
mar such a scene as this with the spectre of a treach- 
erous and cruel lover, or to remember, amid this rural 
peace and beauty, that there are sweet deceived 
young mothers, whose spirits brood over the graves 
of the children they in madness murdered. And 
who that has seen Retzsch's exquisite sketch of the 
peasant-girl of Falkenstein can forget it % We were 
there just before sunset. The little stone-built vil- 



KRONTHAL. 217 

lage lay in the deep shadow of the woodland steep 
which is crowned by the castle. It was a fete-day, 
and the villagers in their pretty costumes looked so 
happy and yet so poor, that they almost made me 
believe in the old adage, " no coin, no care." While 
the girls sat down to sketch, I escaped from a volun- 
teer companion whose voice was as tiresome as a 
March wind, and, getting into an imbowered path, 
passed the prettiest little Gothic church I have seen 
since we were in the Isle of Wight. Here, in the 
green earth, as the legend rudely scrawled above 
them tells you, " ruhen in Gott" (" rest in God") the 
generations that have passed from the village. Faith, 
hope, and memory linger about these graves. There 
are roses and heart's-ease rooted in the ground, and 
wooden crosses, images of saints, and freshly-plat- 
ted garlands of flowers over the graves. What more 
could the richest mausoleum express? I mounted 
through a fragrant copse-wood to the castle — part 
rock and part masonry. The tower is standing, 
and waving from its top is some rich shrubbery, like 
a plume in a warrior's cap. Falkenstein village, 
close under the castle, looked like a brood of chick- 
ens huddled under its mother's wing. Kronberg 
and its towers were in shadow ; but the vast plain 
beyond was bathed in light, and the Main and the 
Rhine were sparkling in the distance. All around 
me was a scene of savage Nature in her stern 
strength, all beyond of her motherly plentiful pro- 
duction. I counted eighteen villages ; a familiar 
Vol. I.—T 



£18 KRONTHAL. 

eye would probably have seen twice as many more. 
They are not easily distinguished from the earth, 
with which their colour blends harmoniously. 

" Life is too short," we said, as we forced our- 
selves away just as the last ray of the sun was kiss- 
ing the aforesaid green plume of the castle. We 
did not get home till it was quite dark, but we were 
as safe and unmolested as if we had been on our 
own hill-sides. 



You will, I know, dear C, think there is " some- 
thing too much" of these old castles and Taunus 
scenery ; but consider how they fill up our present 
existence. But I will be forbearing, and abridge a 
long, pleasant day's work we have had in going to 
Eppestein, a village in a crack of the Taunus, one 
of the narrowest, most secluded, wildest abodes that 
ever man sought refuge in ; for surely it must have 
been as a hiding-place it was first inhabited. 

Some knight must have fled with a few faithful 
followers, and wedged them in here among the 
rocks and mountains. The lords have passed away, 
and the vassals are now peasants. We were invi- 
ted into the habitation of one of them by a cheerful 
dame, whose "jungste" (a blooming lassie) she in- 
troduced to my youngest. I am not willing to lose 
an opportunity of seeing the inside of a cottage; 
hers was all that is habitable of the old castle, and 
is the neatest and most comfortable peasant's dwell- 
ing I have seen. The lord's kitchen was con- 



KRONTHAL. 219 

verted into the peasant's salon, where there was a 
good stove, antique chairs, a bureau, pictures, and a 
crucifix. In the kitchen I saw a very well filled 
dresser. The good woman was eager to hear of 
America; some of her neighbours had gone there. 
" They had but money enough to carry them to the 
ship, and had since sent help to their friends." 
Strange, it seemed, that there should be a relation 
between this sequestered valley and our New World, 
and that our abundance should be setting back upon 
these poor people. " Ours is a fine country for 
the young," said I. "Yes," said an old woman 
from the corner, " but an old tree don't bear trans- 
planting !" 

I should like you to have seen us taking our re- 
past at the mill gasthaus, seated on the pebbly plat 
in settles made of birchen sticks, served by a cheer- 
ful hostess, who sat knitting in the intervals of sup- 
plying our wants, and supplying them with ne-plus- 
ultra bread and butter, tender boiled beef, honey, 
Seltzer-water, and wine: four hungry women for 
sixty cents. The mill-wheel kept its pleasant din 
the while, and another din there was that amused us 
from a handsome youth, who occupied a table near 
us, and who was telling the hostess, with frequent 
glances at us, of a visit he had paid to London. As 
he spoke in French, I presume it was more for our 
edification than that of our hostess. After a very 
picturesque account of the shocking disparity between 
the amount of food and the amount of the bill at an 
English inn, he concluded, " Ah le triste sejour Lon- 



220 KRONTHAL. 

dres ! On prie le bono Dieu tout le Dimanche — ca 
n' amuse pas !"* 

I can believe that England would be to a German 
traveller with stinted means one continued fast and 
penance. 



We saw to-day fifty peasants gathered under a 
chestnut-tree, and an auction going on; but, as 
we saw no wares, we were at a loss what to make 
of it, till we were told the duke's chestnuts were 
selling. Chestnuts are an article of food here. 
This neighbourhood abounds in thriving nurseries, 
which are a main source of revenue to the peas- 
ants. There is one on the hill-side opposite my 
window. It covers thirty acres, and is divided into 
small proprieties and owned by the peasants of 
Kronberg, to whom it brings an annual revenue of 
10,000 florins ($4000) : a shower of gold on these 
children of toil and hardship. 

A labourer in haying and harvesting, the busi- 
est season of the year, is paid one florin 12 kreut- 
zers a day (fifty cents), and finds himself, and works 
earlier and later than our people. If he works for 
several days consecutively for one employer, he is 
allowed a trifle more as drink-geld. A female do- 
mestic in a family where only one servant is kept is 
fed and paid twenty florins a year (eight dollars ! !) ; 
and for this pitiful sum she gives effective, patient, 

* " Oh what a dismal place London is J They pray all day long 
on Sunday— not very amusing that !" 



KRONTHAL. 221 

and cheerful labour. An accomplished cook can 
earn twenty -four dollars ! 

The perfect blending of self-respect with defer- 
ence, of freedom with courtesy, in the manners of 
the subordinate classes in Germany, puzzles me. 
They are, as you perceive by the rate of wages, 
quite as dependant on their employers as in Eng- 
land, but I have never seen an instance of cringing 
servility or insolence. The servants are indefatiga- 
ble in their attendance, grateful for a small gratuity, 
and always meet your social overtures frankly and 
cheerfully. A seamstress sewed for us for two or 
three weeks, a quiet, modest, and respectful girl ; 
when she parted from us she kissed us all, including 
R., not our hands, but fairly on the cheek ; a demon- 
stration to which, as she was young and very pretty, 
neither he nor you would object. 

I bought some trunks at Frankfort of a man who, 
when we had closed our traffic, asked me to go up 
stairs and look at his rooms and the picture of his 
wife ; and when he saw my pleasure in his very clean, 
well-furnished home, he said it was all their own 
earning ; that they had not much, but they had con- 
tented minds, and " that made a little go a great way." 
When he brought home the trunks he brought his 
two little boys to see us. I could tell you fifty sim- 
ilar anecdotes, which all go to prove that the bond 
of brotherhood is sound and strong among them. 

The family ties seem to be very strictly main- 
tained. Children are kept much longer in sub- 
ordination to their parents and dependance on them, 

T2 



222 KRONTHAL. 

than we have any notion of. The period of minor- 
ity may be almost said to extend through the pa- 
rents' life. A very clever German woman lamented 
to me the effect of an English education upon the 
habits of her son. And, by-the-way, she considered 
his reluctance to submit to the restraints of his fa- 
ther's house, and his notion of complete independ- 
ence and escape from the thraldom of his minority, 
to have been perfected by a year's travel in America. 
After telling me that he had refused to occupy a 
suite of apartments in his father's house because he 
could not submit to be asked " where were you yes- 
terday 1" "where do you go to-morrow V 9 she con- 
cluded with, " But I have nothing to complain of; he 
is a very good young man, but he is no longer a 
German. We should have foreseen this when we 
sent him to England ; we cannot expect if we plant 
cabbages they will come up potatoes." 

The strict union of families seems to me to be 
promoted by the general cultivation of music. I say 
seems to me, my dear C. ; for, conscious of my very 
limited opportunities of observation, I give you my 
impressions with unaffected diffidence. Almost ev- 
ery member of a family is in some sort a musical 
performer, and thus is domesticated the most social 
and exciting of the arts. You would be astonished 
at the musical cultivation in families where there is 
no other accomplishment. 

There is one of the rights of women secured to 
them here which I have been assured has an impor- 
tant effect on general prosperity and individual hap- 



KRONTHAL. 223 

piness\ The German wife has an inextinguishable 
right to half the joint property of herself and her 
husband. He cannot deprive her of it by will, nor 
can it be applied to debts of his contracting. " This 
it is," said a gentleman to me, "that makes our 
wives so intelligent in the management of their con- 
cerns, so industrious and economical;" I don't know 
how this may be, but it seems to me to be but com- 
mon justice that a wife should be an equal partner in 
a concern of which she bears so heavy a part of the 
burden. Would not the introduction of such a law 
have a beneficent effect on the labouring classes in 
the United States 1 How many women would be 
stimulated to ingenuity and productive labour if the 
results of their industry were secured to them 1 How 
many women are first wronged and then disheartened 
by having an inheritance consumed by a husband's 
vices, or dispersed by his wild speculations 1 How 
many, well qualified for respectable branches of bu- 
siness, are deterred from attempting them by the im- 
possibility of securing to themselves and their chil- 
dren the proceeds ? How many poor women among 
the lowest class of labourers have you and I both 
known, whose daily earnings have been lawfully 
taken from them by their brutal husbands 1 This is 
a pretty serious evil, as in that class at least (you 
will allow me to say) the destructive vices are pretty 
much monopolized by your sex. 

It is one of our distinctions, thank God, in the 
New World, that we do not quietly rest in any er- 



224 KRONTHAL. 

ror ; so I have faith that in good time this matter 
will be set right. 

It is impossible to witness the system of general 
instruction in Germany without asking if the rulers 
are not making an experiment dangerous to the 
maintenance of their absolutism. Debarred as the 
lower orders are from all political action, it may be 
some time before they use the " sharp-edged tools" 
put into their hands ; but, when they once begin to 
read, to reflect, and compare, they will hardly go on 
quietly wearing a master's uniform, doing his work, 
and eating black bread and potatoes, as if this 
were their full and fair share. 

When you look at the highly-educated classes, at 
the diffusion of knowledge among them, ind con- 
sider the activity, boldness, and freedom of the Ger- 
man mind, you are confounded at the apparent se- 
renity and quietude. But is it not the serenity of 
the mighty ocean, that wants but the moving of the 
wind to rise in resistless waves ? the quietude of the 
powder magazine, inert only till the spark touches it 1 

We are not in a way to hear political topics agi- 
tated. They make no part of general conversation. 
But I have met with some touching expressions of 
feelings that I imagine are much diffused under this 
placid surface of society. One of our German 
friends spoke to me with deep emotion of her aunt, 
who is just embarking for the United States. " She 
is leaving us all," she said; "her children and 
grandchildren, brothers, nephews, nieces, all the 
friends of a lifetime, and such a happy home ! to 



KRONTHAL. 225 

go and live with one son in the backwoods of 
America." 

" Is that son so much a favourite ?" I asked. 

" Oh, no ; but he and his brother have suffered 
for their political opinions. They were imprisoned 
eight years ; one of them died. He was a favour- 
ite ; and so good, so beloved by everybody. My 
aunt says she cannot breathe the air of Germany. 
She must have the free air of America !" 

There is a captain in the Austrian army at Kron- 
thal for his health, a man about fifty, with a most mel- 
ancholy expression of countenance. Ever since he 
knew we were Americans he has manifested an in- 
terest in us. He has asked many questions about 
the country, and let fall on various occasions, in an 
under tone, his respect for our free institutions. His 
extreme despondency affected me, and I took an op- 
portunity to endeavour to inspire him with hope in 
the efficacy of the waters. I repeated to him every 
instance I had heard of benefit in cases similar to 
his ; at each he shook his head mournfully, and then 
explained why the " amen stuck in the throat." " It 
is not my disease," he said ; " that may be cured ; but 
it is my incurable position ; what am I but a mere 
tool in the hands of the men of power employed to 
watch every generous movement, and support the 
wrong against the right ?" It wants but that this 
feeling should be a little more general, and the op- 
pressor's rod will be broken. 

I leave this country with an interest, respect, and 
attachment that I did not expect to feel for any 



226 KRONTHAL. 

country after leaving England. I rather think the 
heart grows by travelling ! I feel richer for the de- 
lightful recollections I carry with me of the urbani- 
ty of the Germans. Never can I forget the " Guten 
tag," " Guten abend," and " Gute nacht" (" good- 
day," " good-evening," and " good-night"), murmur- 
ed by the soft voices of the peasants from under 
their drooping loads • as we passed them in our 
walks. Addison says that the general salutations of 
his type of all benignity, Sir Roger de Coverly, came 
from the " overflowings of humanity" — so surely did 
these. On the whole, the Germans seem to me the 
most rational people I have seen. We never " are" 
but always " to be blessed." They enjoy the pres- 
ent, and, with the truest economy of human life, 
make the most of the materials of contentment that 
God has given them. Is not this better than vague, 
illimitable desires and ever-changing pursuits 1* 



Basle, Switzerland, Sept 23. 

We have been seven days on the way from Frank- 
fort to this place, a distance of 225 miles. We have 
posted, a most comfortable mode of travelling in 
Germany. The postillions are civil, the horses 
strong and well broken, and changed every six 

* I cannot be understood to say, or suspected of intimating, that 
Germany impressed me as happier than our country of general ac- 
tivity, progress, and equalized prosperity. No, every American must 
feel, wherever he goes from home, that his is the happiest country 
for the general interests of humanity — the favoured land; but let us 
remember there are some compensations to other countries— and 
thank God for it— and imbibe, if we can, their spirit of contentment 
and enjoyment. 



JOURNEY TO BASLE. 227 

miles. There is no fast driving — that would be per- 
fectly im-German — but, far more to my liking, 
it is cautious, safe, and uniform. Driving rapidly 
through a new and beautiful country, seems to me in 
the same good taste as walking with a quick step 
through a gallery of pictures. Our posting expenses 
have been at the rate of twelve dollars for thirty-six 
miles ; this, for seven persons, is lower than our or- 
dinary stage-coach fare at home. And how supe- 
rior the accommodation. You can travel just as far, 
and stop when, and as long as you please. We 
have often wished we could turn W.'s corner and 
drive up to your door, and hear the shouts of the 
children at what would seem to them a very gro- 
tesque appearance. The leaders, attached with rope 
traces, are so far from the wheel-horses that our 
equipage must be about thirty feet in length. The 
postillion sits on the near wheel-horse and guides the 
leaders with rope reins. He and his horses are all 
stout, heavy moulded, and reliable. He wears a 
short blue coat, turned up behind with red tips. His 
trumpet is suspended by a cord, from which two 
huge tassels of bright-coloured worsteds hang bob- 
bing down his back. His breeches are of yellow 
buckskin, and his boots are cut up to a point in front 
some inches above the knee, and the whole pleasure 
of his profession seems to be to keep up an eternal 
cracking of his whip, which I found, to ray surprise, 
after two or three days' annoyance, we minded no 
more than his horses did.* 

* Posting here, and generally on the Continent, is monopolized by 



228 JOURNEY TO BASLE. 

The roads are excellent ; quite as good, it seems 
to me, as the English roads, that is to say, perfect. 
We travelled one hundred and eighty miles without 
passing an elevation of more than fifteen or twenty 
feet at the utmost. It is like a road through a mead- 
ow, raised some ten or twelve feet above the ad- 
jacent ground. This is probably from the accu- 
mulation of stones and dirt brought on from year to 
year to repair it. This level road is called (for some 
distance) Berg-strasse (mountain-road), because it 
runs parallel to a range of hills which bound your 
view on the east of the Rhine. R. insisted they 
had been swung back like a gate for the traveller 
to pass ; and so it appears. They start forth at once 
from the low ground, without any preparatory slope 
or an intervening hill, and there they stand as if 
they had just stepped out of your w 7 ay. They are 
covered to their summits with corn and vines, and 
castle-crowned, of course. It w T ould be as strange 
to see a man in Berkshire standing out of door with- 
out his hat, as a hill here without its o'ertopping 
castle. On our right stretches a vast sandy plain, 
with the Rhine gliding through it, and bounded, at 
some sixty miles distance, by the Vosges — French 
mountains. You might fancy a painter had laid out 
the road, so pretty are the views of the villages, so for- 

the government. With our preconceived notions of individual rights, 
we were startled, on arriving at a post-station where there was a de- 
ficiency of horses, to hear the postmaster order an impressment of 
peasants' horses. What would our friends, Colonel W. or Major D., 
the gentlemen-yeomen of S., say to such a procedure? We should 
have a revolution. 



JOURNEY TO BASLE. 229 

tunately does the spire of a cathedral come in here 
and a village church there. The road is often on 
the outskirts of orchards, and bordered by an ave- 
nue of fruit-trees that extend from town to town. 
At almost every post we observed a new costume. 
It seemed like the shifting scenes of the theatre. 
Here we pass peasants and peasant-boys driving 
their carts, with three-cornered hats such as our old 
ministers -wore. Six miles farther, there were fifty 
peasant-girls seated on the ground, picking hops 
from the vine, with immense tortoise-shell combs 
in their hair. A few miles farther on we saw 
them scattered over a hayfield, with hats wide 
enough for umbrellas; and the next change was a 
little high-crowned hat with a narrow brim. Here 
were girls driving a cart drawn by cows, with enor- 
mous black bows on the top of their heads, and, a 
few miles farther, old women shovelling out manure, 
with red velvet caps bordered with black lace. The 
prettiest costumes we saw, and they would have 
done honour to a Parisian improvisatori des modes 
(there are such people, I believe), were on a fete- 
day at Freyberg. Beside all the varieties I have 
mentioned, we had, in their holy day freshness, scull- 
caps of black and coloured velvet, prettily embroi- 
dered with silver and gold, and long braids of hair 
hanging behind and tied with ribands that touched 
the ground — their bodices were of velvet with 
slashed sleeves. Some wore simply a bosom-piece 
worked with beads, and others had bright-coloured 
Vol. L— U 



230 JOURNEY TO BASLE. 

handkerchiefs tied round their throats, and their 
skirts bound with bright-coloured ribands. Con- 
trast this in your imagination with the working- 
dresses of our working-people. Why it is the dif- 
ference between tropical birds and a flock of tame 
sAe-pigeons ! 

As we made Southing we noticed some produc- 
tions that we have not seen before. Tobacco-fields 
have abounded. In approaching Freyberg we saw 
pretty fair patches of Indian corn ; and to-day, trail- 
ing down the terraces, our own honest, broad-faced 
pumpkin has greeted us. The grapes are obviously 
nearer the vintage. I bought a magnificent bunch 
yesterday, and, holding it up as I came in so as to 
display its broad shoulders, said, " I gave but seven 
kreutz' for this !" " Ah, ca commence !" exclaimed 
Francois, his eyes gleaming with his Italian reminis- 
cences. 

There are vineyards of wide-spread fame on this 
route. We drank a delicious red wine at " The 
Fortune" at OfFenburg, kept by Pfahlers, called 
AfFenthaler. Our landlord told us he made 50,000 
bottles a year, and had had orders from New- York. 
I wish he may have more, and everything else that 
may minister to his prosperity ; and so I am sure all 
must wish who have enjoyed, as we did, the com- 
forts and luxuries of " The Fortune." 

The first bad bread we have eaten in Europe — a 
villanous composition with caraway seeds — was at 
Brucksal. One would think good bread would be 
one of the first products of any society one advance 



JOURNEY TO BASLE. 231 

beyond the savage state ; but we know that our coun- 
try is not yet old enough to have perfected the art 
of making it. Perhaps the reason of the difference 
is, that with us, except in the large towns, it depends 
on individual skill, knowledge, virtue, and is exposed 
to various family mischances, whereas in Europe 
it is uniformly made in bakeries. Heaven speed 
the time when we shall have no more sour bread, 
hot bread, heavy bread, bread made with " milk ri- 
sings," and with no risings at all ! " distressful 
bread" truly ! 

"We have passed through some very interesting 
towns on this route, and done traveller's duty in see- 
ing their lions. Darmstadt, not at all interesting, by- 
the-way, though the residence of the Duke of Hesse 
Darmstadt. It is filled with gigantic houses, from 
which the giant proprietors seem to have run away ; 
a more empty-looking town you never beheld. Hei- 
delburg, with its magnificent old castle, its picturesque 
sites, and the scenery on the Neckar around it, is 
worth coming all this way to see. 

At Carlesruhe there is the palace of the Grand- 
duke of Baden, and old, extensive, and beauti- 
fully-adorned pleasure-grounds, to which the public 
have free access. 

Baden — Baden is, as you know, the most famous 
watering-place in Germany. As its waters have no 
longer much reputation, it must owe its chief attrac- 
tion to the beauty of the scenery. In its natural fea- 
tures it resembles the northern towns in our own 
Berkshire j but, with all my home prepossessions, I 



232 JOURNEY TO BASLE. 

must confess that it is more beautiful even than Wil- 
liamstown ; more beautiful, I mean, in its natural as- 
pect. As to what man has built, from the cottage 
to the cathedral, the difference between the Old and 
the New World is — unmeasurable. In the material, 
form, and colour of our buildings, we have done, for 
the most part, all we .could do to deform the fair 
face of our nature. All that we can say for them is, 
that they are either of so perishable a material, or 
so slightly put together, that they cannot last long ; 
and when they are to be replaced, we may hope 
that the inventive genius of our people, guided by 
the rules of art, will devise an architecture for us 
suited to our condition, and imbodying the element 
of beauty. I say " suited to our condition," for it is 
very plain that, where property is so diffused as to 
make individual possession and comfort all but uni- 
versal, and where society is broken into small multi- 
tudinous sects, we have no occasion for the stately 
palaces, the ducal residences, the cathedrals and 
splendid churches of Europe ; nor shall we have the 
beautiful, comfortless cottage niched in an old tower, 
or made of the fragments of a castle-wall, so enchant- 
ing to the eye in the picture-scenes here. After all, 
dear C, when I get home, and have nothing to see 
but our scrawny farm-houses, excrescences, wens as 
they are on the fair earth, it will be rather a comfort 
to think they are occupied by those that own them ; 
that under those unsightly, unthatched, shingled 
roofs are independent, clean, and abundant homes, 
and a progressive people. Still, with patriotism, 



JOURNEY TO BASLE. 233 

common sense, and, I may add, but a common grat- 
itude to Providence for our home-condition, on the 
whole, I cannot but sigh as I look back upon the de- 
light we had yesterday in seeing surely the most ex- 
quisitely beautiful of all cathedrals, the Cathedral of 
Freyburg, and in joining in the vesper service there 
in the twilight of the preceding evening ; yes, join- 
ing, for surely dull must be the spirit that does not 
allow free course to its devotional instincts in such a 
place and at such an hour, while people of all condi- 
tions are kneeling together. You do not ask or think 
by what name their religion is called. You feel that 
the wants of their natures are the wants of your 
own, and your worship is spontaneous, which it is 
not always in our pharasaical pews, amid a finely- 
dressed congregation, and while listening to a ser- 
mon written for the elite of the elite. Dear C, let 
us see things as they are; depend on it, the old 
faith, with all its corruptions and absurdities is, in a 
few of its usages, nearer to the Christian source than 
the new. 

We went to the Cathedral again and again, walk- 
ed round it, and to different points of view, and 
mounted up a vine-covered hill, and sat down under 
a crucifix, whence for an hour we gazed on it, and 
finally looked our last after leaving Freyburg, when 
the last rays of the sun were upon it, and it was set 
off by a background of the Black Forest. Our sen- 
sations were like those you get from reading an ex- 
quisite old poem. 

To come to the prose of the matter, the Cathedral 
M 2 



234 BERNE. 

was begun some eight hundred years ago, and is the 
only large Gothic church in Germany which is comple- 
ted. The tower is finished with a spire ; and though 
of so ponderous a material as stone, so light in its ef- 
fect as to give you the idea (it did give it to L.) of 
an arrow shooting from the bow. I can go on and 
give you dimensions, colour, and form, but, after all, 
.there is nothing for you but to come and see.* 



BERNE. 

Berne, Sept. 25. 
My DEAR C, 
My last letter was from Basle, a town containing 
twenty- one thousand inhabitants, and our first rest- 
ing-place in Switzerland. It is at the head of the 
navigation of the Rhine, and the current is here so 
rapid and the ascent so difficult that, as we looked 
out from the windows of our hotel, JDrei Konige, 

* My readers will thank me, I am sure, for condensing into a few- 
pages my journal of our route from Frankfort to Basle. It was full 
of variety and beauty in the external world, but there was little in- 
cident and no character ; and it requires a skilful artist to make his 
landscape attractive without figures. We became ourselves tired of 
the repetition of descriptions of villages and castles, and, finally, we 
amused ourselves with making the following summary of epithets. 
For castles : " beautiful, brooding, baronial, crowning, elevated, lofty, 
high, grand, magnificent, superb, sublime, lordly, mounted, moulder- 
ing, murky, perched, springing up, suspended, overlooking, watch- 
ing, protecting, guardian, smiling, frowning, threatening, lowering, 
hovering, hung, towering, decayed, dilapidated, crumbling, ruinous, 
picturesque, lovely, light, airy, massy, heavy." 

Villages: "pitched, perched, planted, imbosomed, lapped, cradled, 
nested, sheltered, hidden, concealed, cribbed, ensconced, peeping, 
terraced." We had the modesty to call them synonymes. 



BASLE* 235 

whose walls it washes, we should have thought it 
impossible, but for witnessing the fact. We walked 
out on the terraces over the ramparts, overlooking 
on one side the Rhine, and on the other beautiful 
surroundings, bounded by the Jura, the Vosges, and 
the Black Forest. 

We went to the Minster ; not to admire it, for it 
is a huge, clumsy edifice of the eleventh century ; 
its antiquity desecrated with that Protestant innova- 
tion — pews. But we were attracted by a bust of 
Erasmus, and a monument to him. He and other 
distinguished reformers were buried here. It did not 
strike me quite agreeably to see the memorials of 
these men in a church whose faith they had dissolv- 
ed and whose worship they had subjugated. This 
is too much like converting a conquered enemy's ho- 
liest possessions into trophies. 

Basle is Holbein's birthplace ; and we saw there 
a collection of his pictures and sketches — a few 
of the originals of his most celebrated pictures. It 
is alw r ays interesting to go to the birthplace of a 
man of genius. However far his fame has extend- 
ed, there his heart has rested ; that has been the 
scene of his affections, and, of course, of the happi- 
est hours of his life. 

At Basle posting ended, and we took a voitu- 
rier.* Shortly after leaving Basle we passed a spot 

* An individual undertakes with one set of horses to conduct you 
for one or two days, or all over Europe, if you please. They travel 
from twenty-five to forty miles a day, starting and stopping at an hour 
agreed on, and resting two hours in the middle of the day. Your 
postillion is seldom the owner of the horses, but always a reliable 



236 JOURNEY TO BERNE. 

memorable in Swiss history, where a battle was 
fought in 1444 between the Swiss and French. 
The Swiss fought with invincible courage, and killed 
tenfold their number. It was the unblenching val- 
our displayed on this occasion that led a French 
monarch to select the Swiss for his body-guard, and, 
of course, from this epoch, from this battle-ground, 
dates the employment of Swiss as mercenaries. 
This is a foul blot on their escutcheon, but they 
have done what could be done to diminish it, by 
serving with a fidelity that has passed into a proverb. 
On leaving Bienne we mounted a hill, whence 
we saw the Lake of Bienne and the lovely island 
wdiere Rousseau lived ; and it was while we were on 
this hill that a cry went from mouth to mouth of, " The 
Alps ! the Alps ! the Alps !" Our hearts and — yes, 
I will tell you the whole truth — our eyes were full ; 
for how T , but by knowing how we felt, can you esti- 
mate the sensations they are fitted to produce ? We 

person, and we found him uniformly civil ; his civility is indeed se- 
cured by his wages in some measure depending on the satisfaction 
he gives. You pay fifteen francs a day for each horse (this includes 
return fare), five francs a day, if he serves you well, to your postill- 
ion, and five francs a day for each horse whenever you wish to lie by. 
In Italy, perhaps elsewhere, it is very common for the voiturier to 
provide for you at the inns. In this case you make a contract with 
him as to the kind and mode of your supplies, and the price to be 
paid. On the first of two occasions when we tried this, we were 
perfectly well served; but on a second being not so well served, 
we preferred travelling less trammelled, and not quite so much in the 
fashion of a bale of goods. On the whole, when the roads are good, 
and the days not at the shortest, to elderly people voiturier travelling 
is a very agreeable mode. We would not recommend it to the im- 
patient or the young, who like to put a girdle " round the earth in 
forty minutes." 



JOURNEY TO BERNE. 237 

have heard of the Alps all our lives. We have read 
descriptions of them in manuscript and print, in 
prose and poetry ; we knew their measurement ; we 
have seen sketches, and paintings, and models of 
them ; and yet, I think, if we had looked into the 
planet Jupiter, we could scarcely have felt a strong- 
er emotion of surprise. In truth, up, up, where they 
hung and shone, they seemed to belong to heaven 
rather than earth ; and yet, such is the mystery of 
the spirit's kindred with the effulgent beauty of God's 
works, that they seemed 

" A part 
• Of me and of my soul, as I of them." 

Francois had ordered the postillion to stop, and 
for a minute not a sound broke the delicious spell. 
The day, fortunately, was favourable. The whole 
range of the Bernese Alps was before us, unclouded, 
undimmed by a breath of vapour. There they were, 
like glittering wedges cleaving the blue atmosphere. 
I had no anticipation of the exquisite effect of the 
light on these aerial palaces, of a whiteness as glit- 
tering and dazzling as the garments of the angels, 
and the contrast of the black shadows, and here and 
there golden and rose-coloured hues. I have no no- 
tion of attempting to describe them ; but you shall 
not reproach me, as we, so soon as we recovered 
our voices, reproached all our travelled friends with, 
" Why did not they tell us V 9 " How cruel, how 
stupid to let any one live and die without coming 
to see the Alps !" This morning was an epoch in 
our lives. 



238 JOURNEY TO BERNE. 

I left them lunching at Aarberg, and walked on 
alone. I hoard with a miser's feeling every minute 
in this beautiful country. All my life I have been 
longing to come to Switzerland, and now so rapid 
must be our passage through it, it seems as if, like 
the rainbow, it would fade away while I am looking 
at it. The softer, the comparatively very tame parts 
of it, remind me of our own home surroundings, 
which we have always deemed and which are so 
romantically lovely. This resemblance, and the 
little domestic scenes I passed while straying on 
alone, gave me a home feeling. Once I sat down 
on a bridge to look at some peasant women who 
were dressing flax on a grassy bank sloping to 
the water's edge, while their children were dab- 
bling in the brook. A little girl, of her own kind 
will, left her playmates, came straying on to the 
bridge, and sat down by me, looking up in my face 
with a sweet, trustful expression, as if she had 
grown at my side. I perceived one of the flax- 
dressers suspend her hetchelling to watch our by- 
play, and, toil-worn, weather-beaten as she was, it 
was easy to see, in her pleased attention, that she 
was the mother of the fair, dimpled, bright-eyed 
little creature beside me. She was a picture in her 
pretty Bernese costume. I asked her question upon 
question about her black lace fly-cap, her braids, and 
chains, and bodice, and she replied, and, though our * 
words were in an unknown tongue, we had no need 
of an interpreter. She had got her arm around my 



<? 



BERNE. 239 

neck ; and as I took her dimpled hand in mine, I 
was tempted to cross it with silver, but I checked 
the impulse in time, not to substitute for the kindly 
feeling that for the moment had knit the little stran- 
ger to me, a sordid emotion. It would have been a 
disturbance of Nature's sympathies and affinities. 
There should be other intercourse than mere giving 
and taking between the rich and the poor ; it would 
be well for both parties. 



Beme. — I stood in the balcony of Professor V.'s 
house this morning, while his son pointed out the 
different summits of the Bernese Alps and gave me 
their names. It seemed something like being intro- 
duced to so many illustrious heroes ; and so they 
are ; for there they have stood battling it with the 
elements since their foundations were laid, inspiring 
in each generation, as it came and passed, awe and 
delight. You can hardly imagine a position within 
the bounds of a town so lovely as that of Professor 
V.'s house. It has a terraced garden in the rear ex- 
tending to the Aar more than a hundred feet below 
it, a stream with a Swiss voice. Then think of 
having these Alps for your daily companions — of 
the dawn and the sunset upon them ! Professor 
V.'s wife is the sister of our friend Doctor Follen. 
They assembled their family (very charming young 
people) and some of their friends to see us. I hard- 
ly enjoyed this scene, for, whether I looked out the 
window or in, I could only think of our beloved 



240 GENEVA. 

friend, and of what it had cost him to break the ties 
that bound him to his glorious country and to such 
kindred. Those who achieve liberty in their homes 
can hardly estimate the love of freedom, the devo- 
tion to human rights, that drives such a man as 
Charles Follen into voluntary and perpetual exile ! 

We pride ourselves on the asylum our country of- 
fers to the champions of liberty who have become 
the victims of the Old World's oppressors. This they 
owe to our fathers. Is not our welcome too often a 
cold and stinted one ? Do we not often regard 
them with distrust, rather than supply to them, as 
far as may be, the lost charities of home 1* 



Geneva, September 28„ 

My dear C, 

This place, so long a city of refuge to the victims 
of a persecuting creed, has a peculiar interest to all 
lovers of religious liberty. As religious freedom is 
a natural spur to intellect, Geneva has long been, 
and is yet, a focus of great names which have ex- 
tended indefinitely the intellectual dominions of this 
little canton ; so little, that Voltaire said, " When I 
shake out my wig I powder the whole republic !" 

There is nothing very attractive in the aspect of 
the town. There is the usual opposition found in 
the Continental towns, of the romantic to the useful, 

* I have omitted our journey from Berne to Geneva, as we retraced 
this route in 1840, and then passed some most delightful weeks in 
Switzerland, which came into a subsequent portion of my letters. 



GENEVA. 241 

in the contrast between the picturesque, inconvenient 
old structures, and the modern, light, commodious 
buildings. Lake Leman you and all the civilized 
world have by heart through Byron's poetry and 
Rousseau's eloquent descriptions ; and what a world 
of tiresome journal-reading, " skimble-scamble stuff," 
you are saved thereby ! We are at a hotel on the 
Rhone just where it issues from the lake ; " the ar- 
rowy Rhone" it truly is here. The water is of an 
indigo blue colour, a peculiarity which Sir Hum- 
phrey Davy imputes to the presence of iodine. 



We went to the Cathedral this morning, attract- 
ed by its association with Calvin's name. It was 
here this great man preached when he was exerci- 
sing almost unlimited sway over the consciences and 
lives of the Genevese, and here he promulged those 
doctrines that are still the rule of faith to the strictest 
sects of the religious world. There are various opin- 
ions as to the soundness of his doctrines, but no one 
can question the mental energy of a man, a private 
individual and a stranger, who, by the mere force of 
his fulminations, governed, and with the severest 
rein, the dress, the dinners, and the amusements of 
this community. 

We found a large congregation listening intently 
to a preacher, who set before them the duties result- 
ing from the superior light their fathers had enjoy- 
ed. He made use of one very discreet tactic. Du- 
ring the sermon he made three pauses of about two 

Vol. I— X 



242 GENEVA. 

minutes each, which not only gave him time to draw 
his breath and arrange his thoughts, but provided a 
safety-valve, by which the coughs and other imper- 
tinent sounds so annoying were let off, and on we 
glided in silent attention. The benediction that 
closed the service was a pleasing variation from the 
common formula. "Allez en paix, souvenez vous 
des pauvres, et que le paix de Dieu reste avec vous !"* 
You can hardly imagine, my dear C, what a re- 
freshment a good sermon is to those who are de- 
prived, Sunday after Sunday, of their accustomed re- 
ligious services. The sermon was apparently ex- 
tempore, and delivered with an unction that de- 
lighted us. On coming out, we learned we had 
heard M. Cockerel, of Paris, a celebrated evangelical 
preacher. 

Towards evening K. and I drove out to M. Sis- 
mondi's. He resides at Chesne. We drove away 
from the lake on a level road, past pleasant villas 
and in face of Mont Blanc ; thickly veiled his face 
was though, and, as we are told, he does not show 
it, on an average, more than sixty times a year. 
After a pleasant drive of a mile and a half we 
reached M. Sismondi's house, a low, cottage-like build- 
ing, with a pretty hedge before it, and ground 
enough about it to give it an air of seclusion and 
refinement. On the opposite side of the road, and 
withdrawn from it, is a Gothic church shaded by fine 
old trees, and before it is the Saleve, and Mont Blanc 

* " Go in peace ; remember the poor, and may the peace of God 
dwelL with you." 



GENEVA. 243 

for a background. I envied those who could sit down 
on the stone benches in the broad vestibule of the 
church, with these glorious high altars before them. 
It pleased me to find Sismondi's home in a position so 
harmonizing with the elevation and tranquillity of 
his philosophic mind. As we drove up the serpentine 
approach to his door, I felt a little trepidation lest 
I might not find a friend in my long and intimate 
correspondent — a natural dread of the presence of 
a celebrated man ; but I had no sooner seen his be- 
nignant face, and heard the earnest tones of his 
kind welcome, than I felt how foolish, how pitiful, 
was such a dread: and that I might as well have 
feared going into the sunshine, or into the presence 
of any other agent, however powerful, that is the 
source of general health and happiness. To our 
surprise, we found we were expected. Confalonieri 
is in Geneva, and expecting to intercept us, has de- 
layed for some days his return to Paris. 

After an hour we came away perfectly satisfied. 
Not a look, a word, or tone of voice had reminded 
us that we were meeting for the first time. We 
seemed naturally, and with the glow of personal in- 
tercourse, to be carrying on the thread of an ac- 
quaintance that we had been all our lives weaving. 
I can say nothing truer, nor to you more expressive, 
than that the atmosphere of home seemed to enfold 
us. You would like to know how M. Sismondi looks. 
I can tell you that he is short, stout, and rather 
thick ; that he has a dark complexion, plenty of 
black hair, and brilliant hazel eyes 3 and then you 



244 GENEVA. 

will have just about as adequate a notion of his 
soul-lit face as you would have of the beauty of 
Monument Mountain, the Housatonic, and our mead- 
ows, if you had never seen the sun shine upon them 
or the shadows playing over them. I sometimes 
think it matters not what the original structure is, 
when the character is written on it and the golden 
light of the soul shines over it. It is a very common 
opinion, but is it not an erroneous one, that you cannot 
form a correct opinion of an author from his works ? 
Nine tenths (ninety-nine hundredths ?) of authors, 
so called, are mere collectors — rifacitori — ingenious 
makers of patchwork. An original writer writes 
with earnestness and sincerity. As Titian is said to 
have ground up flesh to produce his true colouring, 
so their works are a portion of their spirits j the 
book is in fact the man. 



We dined at Chesne to-day. Madame S. insist- 
ed we should all come, saying, in her kindest man- 
ner, "It is but sitting a little closer;" and, turning 
to Confalonieri, " we do not give entertainments ; 
but it is better than Spielberg, my dear count." We 
found everything as you would wish to find it in the 
house of a liberal friend. Married people without 
children have always seemed to me much like mutes, 
but here I do not miss them — affections that flow 
full and free will make their own channels. Sis- 
mondi rarely dines out, and " has not," Madame S. 
says, " in his life drank a half glass of wine beyond 



GENEVA. 245 

what was good for him ;" and surely he has his re- 
ward in a clear head, and unshaken hand. He is 
sixty-seven. Madame S. expressed her regret that 
he was so near the allotted term of life, while " he 
had yet so much to do." " I wish," she added, play- 
fully, " that I were nineteen, and my husband twen- 
ty-one." Sismondi replied, that he should not care 
to live his life over again ; " it had been so happy, 
he should not dare to trust the chances." We in 
our rash love would have exclaimed, " Oh king, 
live forever !" forgetting that he will live forever 
without " the chances." 

I inquired after a pair of lovers who had suffered 
from a forbidden attachment, and whose marriage 
had been effected by Sismondi's intervention. A 
letter had just been received from the wife express- 
ing in the strongest terms her happiness. Madame 
S. said " it was indeed a satisfaction to have made 
one human being happy." " One, and it may be 
more," added Sismondi ; " for there is already one 
child, and there may be many more." Is it not a 
sign of a healthy moral condition when a man of 
sixty-seven takes it for granted that existence is hap- 
piness ? 

You should have heard the clatter of our young 
people as we drove away. " Who would think M. 
Sismondi was a celebrated savant ?" exclaimed L. ; 
" I should never think of his being a great author, 
or anything but the best and kindest of men." " Did 
you observe," said M., whose American feeling is 
always at welding heat, "how perfectly well in-« 

X2 



246 GENEVA. 

formed he is about America, even to the smallest 
details?" K. declared that, though she had ridi- 
culed the idea of falling in love at first sight, she had 
already plunged so deep into an affection for Sis- 
mondi that she began to think such a catastrophe 
possible. And then came other characteristic re- 
marks ', L. maintaining that " Madame S. could not 
be an Englishwoman, she was so gentle and lovely !" 
and M. saying she was like the best specimens of 
American women — like E. F. and S. ; and we finally 
laid aside all our national biases pour et contre, and 
finished by agreeing that she is 

" That kind of creature we could most desire 
To honour, serve, and love." 



K. and I walked out this morning to breakfast 
with the Sismondis. It was scarcely nine when we 
sat down to the table. He breakfasted on curds 
and cream, and on these delicate articles Madame 
S. says he expends all his gourmandism. Nine is 
not late now (October 6), and he had already written 
three letters and several graceful stanzas for some 
lady's album. It is by these well-ordered habits of 
diligence that he accomplishes such an immensity 
of work. And with all this labour his mind is as 
free, as much at ease as if he had nothing in the 
world to do but make his social home the cheerful 
place it is. He spoke in terms of high commenda- 
tion of Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, but he 
thought Mr. P. had painted his heroine-queen en 



GENEVA. 247 

beau, and he went on to express his detestation of 
her bigotry, and his horror of its tremendous effects. 
We women contended for her conjugal and maternal 
character. " And what," he asked, " had she done 
for her children but educate a madwoman V 9 Ma- 
dame S. reminded him of Catharine of Aragon. 
"But she," he said, "was not Isabella's daughter." 
We all smiled, and I said that I was glad to find him at 
fault in a point of history. " Ah !" he replied, " his- 
tory for me is divided into two parts : that which I 
have written and forgotten, and that which I have 
not written and have not yet learned." 

M. Sismondi was to bring us to town in his car- 
riage, and, before setting off, there was a good- 
humoured conjugal discussion who, of a swarm 
of strangers, all, of course, with letters to the Sis- 
mondis, were to be invited there in the evening. 
Madame S. objected to Lady So-and-so ; " she 

would talk 'tittery tattery;' " and to Madame , 

who " would come expecting a grand soiree." 
Sismondi pleaded for all, and finally came away 
to make his visits to these people, with much the 
feeling that a bountiful man has in going among 
the poor with a purse full of money, which he 
feels coerced to withhold by the reigning theories 
of political economy. And apropos of political econ- 
omy, Sismondi remarked this morning that the 
English political economists had quite overlooked 
the most striking circumstance in the condition of ] 
the Continental peasantry, that is, that they are 
either the absolute proprietors of the land they cul- 



248 GENEVA. 

tivate, or they are metayers, that is, they cultivate it 
on shares. The lease is sometimes for three hundred 
years. You see at once this gives a stability and 
dignity to their condition which the English tenant 
has not; and the pride and pleasure of family trans- 
mission, and thus an extension of their being. 

I asked if the working classes here were making 
progress. He said, " No j on the contrary, there 
was less development of mind than fifty years ago, 
for then there existed a law, now annulled, forbid- 
ding a master-workman to employ more than two 
journeymen. Now the tendency of things is to 
make great capitalists, and to reduce the mass of 
men to mere c mechanicals.' As to progress with 
the peasantry, that was quite out of the question." 
What a strange and death-like condition this seems 
to us! When I think of the new, the singularly 
happy condition of our people among the working 
classes of the world, I am vexed at their solemn, 
anxious faces. If they have all outward prosperity, 
they have not that cheerfulness of the countenance 
which the wise man says betokeneth the prosperity 
of the heart. There is something wrong in this — 
some contravention of Providence. 



I met M. de Candolles last evening at a soiree at 
Sismondi's. Besides having the greatest name in 
Europe as a botanist, he is a most agreeable person. 
He and Sismondi talked across me most courteously 
of our country, and with a minuteness of informa- 



GENEVA. 249 

tion that showed what an interesting field it is to 
the philosopher and the man of science. De Can- 
dolles spoke respectfully of our botanists, Grey, 
Nuttall, and Elliott, and dwelt on the superior rich- 
ness of our country, for the botanist, to Europe. 
" America is for me and not for Sismondi," he said ; 
" for you have no history." He does not imagine 
how much we make of our little ! 

There were some dozen people present, and we 
took our tea round the tea-table, which was spread 
with biscuits, cake, sweetmeats, and fruit, quite in 
the rural fashion of New-England. The English, 
we are told, laugh at this mode of hospitality, and 
desecrate Lake Leman with the homely title of 
" Tea-water Lake" When will the English learn 
to look with a philosophic eye on customs that differ 
from their own 9 

There was a gentleman present who enacted the 
part of the fly on the wheel, making a prodigious 
buzzing. He seemed particularly disturbed with 
the idea of women intermeddling in politics, but 
graciously concluded by conceding "they might 
know what they would on the subject provided they 
did not talk about it." " On the contrary," said De 
Candolles, " they may talk as much as they please 
provided they know nothing." So, pardon the vul- 
gar proverb, the fool put us into the frying-pan, and 
the wise man pushed us into the fire ! 

De Candolles adverted to the curious subject of 
relative happiness. He said you might know the 
moment of passing from a Protestant to a Catholic 



250 GENEVA. 

canton by the extreme wretchedness of the people ; 
and yet they were far more gay than their Protest- 
ant neighbours.* This he imputed in part to their 
throwing off the burden of their sins every Sunday, 
and in part to their having no anxious dreams of 
improving their condition ; to their being, in short, 
in that respect, in the condition of the brutes that 
are grazing in the fields. M. de Candolles is right ; 
it is those " who have a prospect" that strain every 
nerve to press forward. It is the foreseeing, the pro- 
viding, the calculating, that shadows over the coun- 
tenances of an ever-onward people with anxiety. 
With so much good we must take the evil patiently .f 



Sunday evening. — We have just returned from 
taking tea with the Sismondis. Madame S. spoke 

* At the Reformation, the religion of each canton was decided by- 
vote ; in some cases by a majority of only one or two voices. The 
dissenters acquiesced or removed. " Dieu benisse la plus grande 
voix," was their motto ; their version of " Vox populi, vox Dei." 

f The working man of the Old World has nothing to do, can do 
nothing, but provide for the cravings of nature. What does our 
working man? Strain every nerve to educate a son, and give to all 
his children " school privileges." Instead of tilling another's land 
he improves his own farm, or strives to be able to buy a better. In- 
stead of a blind submission to a transmitted faith and an imposed 
priest, he examines the grounds of his religion and selects its min- 
ister ; and in place of an inevitable obedience to absolute rulers and 
oppressive laws, he chooses his governors, and the legislators that 
are to make and modify the laws he is to obey. It is obvious what 
different places in the scale of humanity are occupied by these two 
classes of working men, and why the happiness of the citizen of the 
United States should not be the happiness of the peasant, but should 
be more elevated, more extended, and more serious. 



GENEVA. 251 

of the Genevese women as the most exemplary she 
has ever known 3 this, mind ye, is the opinion of an 
Englishwoman. They are reproached, she says, 
with being raide and pedantic in their virtues, but 
she maintains that " it is exactness, not pedantry." 
She attributes much of the merit of their strict per- 
formance of their moral duties to the pastors of Ge- 
neva. Every young person, on attaining the age 
of fifteen, enters on a course of religious instruc- 
tion from the pastor, which excludes other studies 
and all amusements. All ranks are comprised in 
this sacred study and novitiate. The neophyte is 
examined at the end of the year, and, if found 
wanting, the instruction is extended through another 
year. When admitted to the communion, she ap- 
pears dressed in white, veiled, and attended by her 
friends, and a discourse is preached touching the du- 
ties and dangers of her future life. All this must 
make a deep impression on the mind at its most sus- 
ceptible period. Madame S. says she has often 
been astonished at the nice discrimination of her 
domestics on moral subjects; and when she asked, 
" Where did you learn this V they replied, " Ah, 
madam, we learned a great deal during our year 
of instruction !" 

There is another old institution in Geneva to 
which she imputes much virtue. This is the " So- 
ciete des Dimanches" (the " Sunday Society"). 
When a girl attains the age of five years she is 
made a member of a Societe des Dimanches, con- 
sisting of the children of her mother's friends. They 



252 GENEVA. 

meet every Sunday afternoon, attended only by a 
nurse or governess, who does not prescribe their 
amusements, and only interferes in case of necessity. 
The first girl of the community who marries gives her 
name to the society, and, as soon as there is a mar- 
ried woman among them, young men are admitted, on 
application, by the vote of the sisterhood. Their 
meetings continue through life. Madame S. says 
this association supplies to the lonely the attach- 
ments and -aids of a family circle ; that if a girl 
falls into misfortune, she is succoured by her com- 
panions ; if her father's fortunes are ruined, there is 
no apparent change in her condition. This institu- 
tion is confined to the native Genevese; of course 
Madame S. is excluded, and her favourable opinion 
is the result of her observation of its effects, and not 
of an esprit de corps. Sismondi is a member of 
three societies, De Candolles of every one in the 
place. It was delightful to see the pleased interest 
with which Sismondi listened to his wife's eulogium 
of his countrywomen. He drew his chair nearer 
and nearer, and when she ended he put his arm 
around her, and said with that simplicity which in 
him is such a grace, " Je te remercie, mon cceur." 

Sismondi said the chief glory of Geneva resulted 
from its having been the asylum of the oppressed 
from all parts of Europe. " I can never think with- 
out emotion," he continued, " of the band of French 
Protestants who came here for refuge." His voice 
was choked; after a moment he added, "when 
they reached the summit of the Jura and saw the 



GENEVA. 253 

lake and city before them, they all, with one accord, 
fell on their knees and sang a psalm !" His tears 
again interrupted him, and he apologized for them, 
saying, " Ce sont les choses qui me meuvent le plus, 
je ne puis jamais en parler."* You have an infalli- 
ble test of the heart when you know what does most 
move it. In this uncontrollable emotion Sismondi 
betrayed the unbounded love of freedom and the 
deep love of his fellow-creatures that breathes in 
all his works. 



Sismondi was to take K. and me up to-day on his 
way to Malagny, where we were engaged to dine 
at Mrs. Marcet's. He came rather late, and some- 
what flurried ; one of his horses, a faithful servant 
stricken in years, had fallen on the way. He la- 
mented him as your Willie would have lamented old 
Larry. " I must make up my mind to it now," he 
said ; " he must be shot. I would shoot my wife if 
she were in such a condition !" 

We got another carriage, and were at Mrs. Mar- 
cet's quite in time. This lady, as I am sure your 
grown-up and growing-up girls will be glad to 
know (if there is any gratitude in them), is living in 
affluence, and with great elegance, at one of the 
most beautiful villas on the lake. Don't let them 
imagine she has found the philosopher's stone in her 

* " These are the sort of things that most move me. I cannot 
speak of them." Though Sismondi speaks English perfectly well, 
French is his language, and, when off his guard, he falls into it. 

Vol. L— Y 



254 GENEVA. 

scientific researches. She inherited her fortune, and 
has set them the example of studying for the love 
of it, and has reaped, distributed, and enjoyed a rich 
harvest. 



We went last evening to our friends at Chesne 
to meet a sewing society for the poor — -just such as 
we have in our own villages. We found the histo- 
rian of the Italian Republics, and the writer of other 
and more books than many people ever read, ar- 
ranging the chairs and tables with madame, and 
Henri and Francoise, their servants, whom they 
treat more like friends than servants. Presently, 
Madame Martin, the wife of the pastor, entered with 
a pile of garments cut out and ready for her coadju- 
tors. Their goings on were much like ours on simi- 
lar occasions, except that the husbands were allowed 
admittance, and a quiet game of whist in the corner, 
provided they play for a few sous, and give the win- 
nings to the society. Mr. Martin is a man of supe- 
rior intellect and most delightful countenance; I 
thought so, at least, while he was asking me ques- 
tions with great interest about my country. The 
girls had promised to join the sewers, but, instead, 
they were reapers. I turned, and saw them all 
gathered round M. Sismondi in the corner, L. at his 
feet, and he reciting Italian verses to them ! 



We drank tea last evening with Madame B., a 



GENEVA. 255 

pretty little Genevese, who lives during the sum- 
mer at a most lovely place on the lake. We walk- 
ed down to the shore by the twilight, and saw at 
a short distance a beautiful chaloupe (a yacht) with, 
as it appeared, a single sailor on board. Madame 
B. shouted to him, and directly he came in a row- 
boat to the shore, and proved to be her brother, 
a youth who, while getting a mercantile education 
at Liverpool, conceived such a passion for water- 
pleasures that his father has given him this cha- 
loupe ; and every day, after coming from the count- 
ing-house in town, he puts on his red flannel shirt 
and tarpaulin, and enacts the sailor on the lake. 
He rowed us to the chaloupe. It was a warm and 
lovely evening, and there we floated in a state of 
quiet enjoyment, not a sail passing us, or a sound 
disturbing our tranquillity. What a contrast this 
lake to what it would be with us ! It is the largest 
lake in Switzerland, between forty and fifty miles 
long and six broad, with Geneva, a free town of 
30,000 inhabitants, at one end of it, and many pop- 
ulous towns on its shores, and on the great thorough- 
fare to Italy. Some of the land about it is extreme- 
ly valuable, selling at one thousand pounds sterling 
an acre, and producing 8000 bottles of wine ; and, 
finally, Geneva is so mercantile a place in its char- 
acter, and so thriving, that, as some wag has said, 
" If you see a man jumping out of a third story win- 
dow, you may safely jump after him; you will be 
sure of making ten per cent, by it." 

With all these incitements to activity, there is 



256 GENEVA. 

hardly a sail moving on the lake, and only one little 
steamer, that plies daily between Geneva and Ve- 
vay. No wonder De Tocqueville says he was pre- 
pared for everything in America but its general stir. 
We had a family party at tea, the father and un- 
cle of our hostess. They have all summer residen- 
ces within one enclosure ; on one " campagne," as 
they call a country-place here. Our new acquaint- 
ances have the sterling currency of our best people 
at home : intelligence, good sense, and naturalness. 
The family ties are drawn closer here than with us, 
where the young birds are driven forth from the pa- 
rent-nest as soon as fledged. 



You would not thank me, perhaps, for saying 
nothing of Ferney, though I can have nothing new 
to say of a place that every traveller visits. We 
made an hour's drive of it to the village of Ferney, 
a place which grew up under Voltaire's fostering 
hand during his twenty years' residence here. The 
church is standing which he erected for others to 
worship in. The pious revolutionists have removed 
the stone on which he inscribed "Deo erexit Vol- 
taire." The chateau and grounds are in good pres- 
ervation. The show-rooms, Voltaire's bedroom, and 
an adjoining salon are, with good taste, kept by the 
proprietor as Voltaire left them, that is, as far as the 
virtuoso-spoilers will permit them to be. The bed- 
curtains have been torn off shred by shred, till only 
fragments remain. The apartment struck me as 



GENEVA. 257 

one of the saddest monuments of human vanity. 
There were everywhere traits of that littleness of 
mind which, in spite of Voltaire's infinite genius and 
his love of freedom — his utter hatred of bigotry and 
tyranny ecclesiastical and political — degraded him, 
justly diminished his influence with most people and 
destroyed it with the best. None but moral power 
has an indestructible agency. 

There is a picture in the salon — a w T retched daub 
— said to have been painted by his direction, at any 
rate it was hung up under his eye. He is repre- 
sented as being led to the throne of Apollo by Hen- 
ry the Fourth, with the Henriade in his hand, while 
Fame blows her trumpet, and a host of allegorical 
winged figures stand ready with smoking censers in 
their hands to usher him into the temple of Memory. 
Beneath his feet lie his detractors undergoing every 
species of torment. 

In his bedroom is another apotheosis, a " fanta- 
sie," called " Le Tombeau de Voltaire." The four 
quarters of the globe, represented by emblematical 
figures, are approaching to do homage, while Igno- 
rance, with bat's wings and bandaged eyes, is ad- 
vancing to drive them away. America is represent- 
ed by Franklin in a fur cap, moccasins, and a blank- 
et ! — The dear old sage, the very antagonist princi- 
ple of savage life ! Opposite the fireplace is a huge 
erection, that looks more like a German stove than 
anything else, with an urn on the top of it, in which 
Voltaire's heart was to have been placed. It is thus 
inscribed : " Mes manes sont consoles puisque mon 

Y2 



258 GENEVA. 

coeur est au milieu de vous ;" and underneath, " Son 
esprit est partout et son cceur est ici." The empire 
of his mind has contracted to a small space ; and as 
to his heart — but God forgive us for our narrow 
judgments ! 

By the side of a portrait of Catharine II. of Rus- 
sia, worked in worsted by herself for Voltaire, 
there is a picture of a very sweet-looking young 
woman, his laundress, and another of a Savoyard 
peasant-boy whom he adopted ; this looked well. 
On one side of the fireplace is a portrait of Madame 
de Chatelet, tremendously rouged ; and on the other, 
of Mademoiselle St. Denis. Among some indiffer- 
ently-engraved heads hanging up, I noticed Racine, 
Corneille, Milton, Newton, Washington, and Frank- 
lin. If, as I have fancied, the pictures a man selects 
for his bedroom afford some indication of his char- 
acter, these are good witnesses for Voltaire. The 
furniture was ordinary, and nothing superfluous. 

We walked over the grounds, and were shown 
the " petit foret" (a long avenue through a wood), 
down which he daily drove in great state with six 
horses and gilded harness. We passed through his 
" Berceau" a walk between elm-trees closely plant- 
ed and trained to meet overhead, where, it is said, 
he composed as he walked. 

On one side the boundary of his estate is marked 
by a high embankment, which, we were told, he had 
made to shut out the view of the chateau from a 
man with whom he had had a controversy at law. 



GENEVA. 259 

Was it in his own heart that he found the gall to 
write his satires on human nature ? He was, they 
say, the terror of all the little boys in the neighbour- 
hood ; and yet there are local tales of his generosity 
and benevolence ; an ocean of them could scarcely 
wash out this stain. 

We went to see an old man living in a lodge on 
the estate, who was the son of Voltaire's gardener, 
and who had the honour of carrying his note-book 
for him during his walks the last four years of his life. 
He drives a good trade showing a antiquities," as he 
calls some old rubbish, relics of his saint — canes, 
wig, &c. The only thing worthy of note was a 
book of seals, which Voltaire was in the habit of 
taking from the letters of his correspondents, and 
preserving in this way for reference, so that he 
might know who were the writers of subsequent let- 
ters, and take them or not, as suited him, from the 
post-office. To many of them he had affixed after 
the name a word of comment, as " J. J. Rousseau — 
un Bouillon !" The prevailing one is " Fou !" The 
old man gave us an absurd narrative of the begin- 
ning of Voltaire's and Gibbon's acquaintance. I do 
not know what foundation in truth it has, but there 
is some wit in it. Voltaire had been offended by a 
sarcasm of Gibbon's on his person; and when he 
first visited Ferney, its master shut himself up in 
his room, desiring his niece to be polite to his visiter. 
But his visiter persevering in staying, he wrote him 
the following note : " Don Quichotte prenait les au- 



260 GENEVA. 

berges pour des chateaux, mais vous prenez mon 
chateau pour une auberge."* 

" Eh bien, madame," said Francois, as we re- 
turned to the carriage, " vous avez vu le chateau du 
plus grand poete du monde." Oh, shades of Shaks- 
peare, Milton, Dante, that even a courier should 
thus style Voltaire ! but this is fame. 



We have been to Coppet, about seven miles from 
Geneva, and all the way a most enchanting drive 
on the borders of the lake. The chateau is oc- 
cupied by the Baroness de Stael, the widow of 
Madame de StaeTs only son, a childless widow. 
Madame Sismondi told me she saw the poor woman's 
only child die in her arms. So there is no present, 
no future to this abode of genius and filial love. 
The chateau has a park attached to it, and is a large 
edifice, with an air of wealth and comfort. The 
family burying-place is surrounded with so thick a 
plantation of trees that you can see nothing from 
without, and all ingress is forbidden to strangers. I 
like this. The places of our dead should be kept 
for those who come with softly tread and tearful 
eyes. I felt a nervous shuddering in looking at this 
burial-place. There was in Madame de Stael some- 
thing so opposed to death, a life that " worked up 
to spirit" what in others is inert, that it seemed as if 

* " Don Quixotte took inns for castles ; you have taken my castle 
for an inn. 



GENEVA. 261 

she herself were struggling to escape from this si- 
lence and inactivity. 

I have heard Madame de Stael spoken of here 
among her old neighbours and friends as one of the 
most amiable of women, full of all sorts of gentle 

humanities ; and yet tells me that spending a 

day at Coppet was in Madame de Stael's lifetime 
one of the heaviest things imaginable. The Duchess 
de Broglie and her brother were silent and indiffer- 
ent. The son was overshadowed by his mother's 

genius, and thinks the Duchess de Broglie 

might have been saddened by the violence her moth- 
er's life did to her very strict religious ideas. It 
was not till very near the close of her life that the 
daughter awoke to a sense of happiness, and then 
she was a completely altered woman. 

Madame de Stael's experience is against the the- 
ory of the transmission of genius by the mother. 
Her son, by De Rocca, now living in Paris, is said 
to be an excessively ridiculous person, silly and af- 
fected, and, what is worse, rich and avaricious. The 
world have been much amused with a story of his 
having jumped out of a window from mere fright. 
Is it not strange that a son of Madame de Stael and 
De Rocca, a man of known valour, should have 
neither intellect nor bravery ? 



We have one association with the waters of 
" clear and placid Leman," not very poetic, though 
poetic it should be, since so true a poet as Dickens 



262 GENEVA. 

has taken to weaving the warp and woof of work- 
ing life in " fancy's loom." Directly under the win- 
dow of our saloon, at a few feet from the shore, and 
communicating with it by a bridge, there is a wash- 
house where at least fifty washerwomen wash ev- 
ery day, and all day from dawn till dark. You 
know we look upon Monday as the day Job cursed 
because it is devoted to this hardest of household 
labour. But here these poor women are at it week 
in and week out, rubbing the clothes on an inclined 
board, beating them, and then stretching out of the 
window to rinse them in the rushing water. What 
a holyday is our women's "washing-day" compared 
to this ! It was well for them they had excited our 
sympathy, for my laundress has just brought home 
my clothes with a deficit of a night-dress ; and on 
my asking for it, she replied, "Ah, madame, c'est 
noye !" (it is drowned), an accident which, she tells 
me, often occurs. 



After waiting as long for fair weather* as we 
discreetly could, we left Geneva yesterday on an 
excursion to Chamouny ; and, though the sun shone 
out on our starting, we arrived after nightfall at St. 

* The clouds, or, as they say, the " le chapeau de Mont Blanc," 
were never fairly off his head while we were at Geneva, for three 
weeks. We had, however, little rain, and the weather was uniform 
and of a delicious temperature, the mercury scarcely varying day or 
night from 64°. M. Sismondi told me that in winter it sometimes falls 
as low as 20° below zero, Fahrenheit ; and he had known it in one 
day fall forty degrees. This approaches our climate of magnificent 
extremes. 



CHAMOUNY. 263 

Martin's in a pouring rain. This morning, when I 
rose at six, it was still cloudy, but not raining, and 
I could see (if I half broke my neck to look straight 
up rocky ramparts) here and there a pinnacle of the 
Alps. The peasants were passing in carts and on 
foot to their labour, very, very poor, but decently 
clad in substantial stuffs, and, almost without excep- 
tion, with umbrellas j a rare, and but a holy day lux- 
ury with our working people at home ! 

I went down to a stone-bridge a few yards from 
our inn, where we are told that in clear weather 
there is one of the most beautiful views in Switzer- 
land. Even as I saw it, with Mont Blanc hidden, 
and half the sublime mountains that enclose the val- 
ley veiled in mist, there was as much beauty as I 
could take in. I will not attempt to describe it, for 
I could only use terms I have used before, and you 
would get no new idea, while to us it seemed as if 
we stood on the vestibule of another world. While 
I remained on the bridge in a sort of rapturous trance, 
I stopped a peasant with the question with which I 
importune every passer-by, " Shall we see Mont 
Blanc to-day V 9 " Ah ! I do not know — it is possi- 
ble — cependant le terns est un peu facheux." He 
saw I was sorrier than the weather, and lingered to 
point out to me some promising signs, and we fell into 
a little talk, in the course of which he found out that 
I came from New- York, at which he made a vehe- 
ment exclamation, and added that he had a brother 
in ray country. " In what part of it V 9 I asked ; " for 
it is somewhat bigger than Switzerland." 



264 CHAMOUNY. 

" In Buenos Ayres ! and if madame would have 
the goodness to take a letter to him !" 

"With all my heart," I said; "but that New- 
York was much farther from Buenos Ayres than St 
Martin's from Paris." " Ah ! but it was on the 
same side of the great sea ;" and he seemed so sure 
Heaven had sent " madame" an express to take the 
letter, that I gave him my word I would do my best 
to get it to his brother ; upon which he was posting 
off to Sallenches, three or four miles, to obtain a 
sheet of paper on which to write it. I offered him 
one, so he came with me to the inn, and I heard him 
telling our postillion what a capital opportunity he 
had found to send a letter to his brother ! His letter 
will put in requisition the best writer of the parish 
to get it ready before our return from Chamouny. 
Poor peasant of St. Martin's ! but there are homesick 
times, my dear C, when I could envy him his igno- 
rance of distances. 

We left St. Martin's at nine in two chars a bancs, 
a little low carriage which, with squeezing, will con- 
tain three people, sitting sideways to the horses, 
who trot at a pretty good pace over the steep and 
stony hills. The drive to Chamouny is perfectly 
Swiss in its character; stern and wild, lonely, and 
yet most beautiful. The poor peasants, toiling in 
these sullen solitudes, strike you at one moment as 
the most helpless and neglected children of earth, 
and at the next you look at them with a sort of 
reverence and admiration. You see young crea- 
tures just on the threshold of life, and old women 



CHAMOUNY. 265 

just dropping out of it, who all day long are fol- 
lowing their cows, their few sheep, and sometimes a 
single goat, around these rocky precipices, on the 
verge of eternal snow, menaced by avalanches, 
slides, and torrents, with their knitting in their hands, 
dauntless and as fearless as if they were in our quiet 
pastures beside our still waters. "The heavens 
shall be rent as a scroll, the mountains shall trem- 
ble, the earth shall pass away" — the spirit of man 
remaineth ! 

You are constantly reminded of man's perils and 
wants. Here you pass a mute little stream that a 
few hours' rain swells to a frightful torrent; and 
there the bed of a lake that last year was a mirror of 
beauty, and now is a mass of naked stones and dirt; 
everywhere are crucifixes to remind you that where 
danger is present religion is felt to be a necessity. 
The sunshine and shadows that flit over the gleaming 
needles and walls of rock fill every minute with the 
sensations of events. Nature speaks here to the 
soul, as history, poetry, tragedy do elsewhere. 

As you approach Chamouny, the interval between 
the mountains becomes narrower and narrower ; and 
when you enter what is properly the " valley," and 
see a little cluster of houses and a sprinkling of cot- 
tages over the almost inaccessible hill-sides, you 
wonder where are bestowed the 3000 people who, 
our guide-book tells us, dwell here. 

It is not quite a hundred years since Chamouny 
has been visited except by those who came to sup- 
ply the physical and religious wants of the poor 
Vol. I.—Z 



266 CHAMOTJNY. 

people. Campus Munitus, Champ-muni, or fortified 
field, perhaps from its mountain boundaries, was the 
origin of its present name. Now more than three 
thousand visitors come here in one season; three 
thousand happy creatures they must be, at least 
once in their lives. We could easily believe that 
the snowy peaks we see belong to Mont Blanc ; but 
the good people are too loyal to their sovereign to 
let us enjoy this delusion. " Oh non, non, ce n'est 
pas Mont Blanc — c'est bien dommage, mais Mont 
Blanc est voile."* 

We were posting off to the source of the Averron 
but some English explorers have just returned, and, 
in conjunction with our weary bones aching from 
the jolting cars, have persuaded us the sight is not 
worth the pains it costs. So here we are, sitting in 
the balcony, looking up at the clouds that invest 
Mont Blanc, and at the bright pinnacles that shoot 
out from the mist which floats over them and then 
settles down like a dark belt, cutting them off from 
earth. Truly, they do appear less of earth than of 
heaven, and I do not think we should be surprised 
to see cherubim and seraphim floating over them. 



The evening has been chilly, and drove us in 
early, to share, in common with all the guests of 
this Hotel de Londres, a small mercy of a fire in 
the salon a manger. There are here, besides us, 

* " No, that is not Mont Blanc ; it is indeed a pity, but Mont Blanc 
is hidden." 



CHAMOUNY. 267 

a few other stragglers on the skirts of the sea- 
son : two noisy English lads, willing to enjoy and 
impart such fare as they find ; a good-humoured 
Frenchman, ready to throw the little information he 
possesses into currency; some Germans, civil and 
satisfied ; and a stately English pair sitting in the 
corner, the lady with her feet stretched out to the 
fire, in an attitude to express her right to take her 
ease, and that she is part of no chance company 
nor they of her. We crossed the channel with 
these people, and have encountered them repeated- 
ly since, and, for our own convenience, we have be- 
stowed on them the soubriquet of Lord and Lady 
Soho — the name of our steamer. My lady must 
belong to the family of the man who could not save 
a drowning fellow-creature till he was introduced ; 
though I hardly think that even in such extremity 
she would ask for an introduction. Her husband is 
less a caricature of the infirmity of his nation. He 
has twice bowed to us, and once he recommended 
to R., in the exigency of sour bread and bad butter 
(which, by-the-way, we have here), roast potatoes. 
This, I think, was in return for a slight favour I once 
did him ; for the English are as scrupulous in pay- 
ing these small social debts, as they are abstemious 
in courtesy. 



We were at the window repeatedly during the 
night ; but, though many pinnacles appeared, like 
guardsmen bold and good, clouds and darkness were 



268 CHAMOUNY. 

about Mont Blanc. We were early astir to make our 
arrangements for the ascension of the Montanvert. 
The whole business of furnishing guides, mules, &c, 
is placed by the government in the hands of a " guide 
en chef" whose corps consists of forty men.* We 
had each a mule and a guide, and paid six francs 
each ; a very moderate price for the service. 

E. not being strong enough to ride, was carried 
in a porte-chaise by six bearers. Our long proces- 
sion, as we left the court of the inn, appeared, as my 
guide Jacques Simon said, " like pilgrims going to 
the shrine of our lady." These guides are a peculiar 
people. They are banded together, and Jacques as- 
sures me they have no quarrels ; as a proof that they 
feel their mutual dependence, they maintain a com- 
mon fund to aid the widows and orphans of their 
companions. They keep much good company, as 
men of science and other educated men and women 
come from the ends of the earth to be led by them 
through these magnificent works of Nature. These 
wise people have for the moment, at least, some- 
thing like a feeling of good fellowship with their 
peasant-guides ; they are, if I may judge by our own 
sensations, a little nearer Heaven, in the spirit as 
well as in the body, than they ever were before ; 
and thus that happens which should always happen, 
the electric fire of humanity is transmitted from the 
highest to the lowest in the scale. 

Simon has been a guide since he was sixteen ; he 
is now fifty-two, and, of course, as familiar with 

The price is regulated by a fixed tariff. 



CHAMOUNT. 269 

these mountain-paths as you are with that to your 
door-step. He was talkative and eloquent, for he 
has learned to interpret the voice of Nature and to 
discern her spirit in these her most sublime mani- 
festations.* He described, with a touching grace, 
the Alpine life of vicissitude, excitement, and hard- 
ship. " Our people work hard for a few potatoes," 
he said ; " and a misfortune comes" (a " malheur," 
meaning an avalanche or a slide), " tears up their soil, 
and overwhelms their cottages." A son of the cel- 
ebrated Balmar, the first man who ever went to the 
summit of Mont Blanc, has gone to New- York to 
seek his fortune. Simon has had thoughts of fol- 
lowing him. This seemed to me a hard case of the 
" utile contre le beau ;" and forgive me, dear C, if I 
felt, while winding up the Montanvert, that I would 
not have exchanged a birthright under its shadow 
for the fee-simple of the Astor House. I was in L.'s 
vein, who, on some one asking yesterday, " What is 
the use of ascending Mont Blanc V 3 she replied, "I 
hate use." 

And, by-the-way, Simon has made this formida- 
ble ascension three times, but never will again ; as 
each time, he says, has added ten years to his life. 
This w 7 ill give you some notion of the undertaking; 
and yet, last year a spirited Frenchwoman achieved 
it, a Mademoiselle D'Angeville, attended only by 
these mountain-bred people. They were full of an- 

* Afterward, in seeing more of Switzerland, I became thoroughly 
convinced that Nature is not her own interpreter to man. I have 
never seen people that seemed to me merer animals than the Swiss 
peasants amid their sublimest scenery. 

Z2 



270 CHAMOUNY. 

ecdotes of her cheerful courage and perseverance, 
and awarded her the palm over all the pilgrims they 
had conducted to this glorious temple. A feather 
this in the cap of our womankind ! 

After crossing the milky Arve and passing through 
the wood of firs that skirts the valley, we began wind- 
ing up the wall-like side of the Montanvert by a zig- 
zag path which at every few yards made such sharp 
turns that I wondered how the lumbering body of 
my mule got round them. I shuddered when I saw 
my companions hanging above and below me, and 
thought that a single misstep of our beasts might send 
us sheer down thousands of feet. But I was reas- 
sured by hearing the merry voices of the girls ring- 
ing out like festive bells ; and, besides, there is little 
danger ; your mule is, as Simon ' said, " expressly 
made for mountain-paths ;'•' ) r our guide is always at 
your bridle; and if your head is getting giddy, 
you have only to " look aloft ;" an old recipe for 
steadying the nerves. There may be more peril in 
the descent. Once I proposed dismounting, but Si- 
mon, though he admitted there was danger to women 
of weak nerves, assured me there was no risk to a 
lady of "such good courage;" so, you see, it is 
never too late to get a good name, if you cast your- 
self on the sagacity of — strangers ! 

We were two hours and a half reaching the house 
of refreshment on the brink of the Mer de Glace. 
This is a mass of ice which fills up a chasm between 
the mountains. The guides assured us it was a mile 
and a half in breadth, and that its extent, as far as 



CHAMOUNY. 271 

your eye could see it, was six miles. This seems 
quite incredible ,• but the objects are all on so much 
larger a scale than you are accustomed to that their 
actual measurement amazes you. The nearest pin- 
nacle, the Aiguille du Dru, is five thousand feet 
higher than the Montanvert ; it did not appear to 
me more than half its actual height. Imagine a 
river, with mountains for shores, running up into 
pinnacles, descriptively named aiguilles (needles), 
and that river arrested and frozen at a moment when 
it was lashed into sea-like waves, and you have an 
idea, my dear C, of the features of this place, but 
none of the sensations its wonderful expression pro- 
duces. 

I cannot tell why, but, till we were actually on 
the Mer de Glace, I had no adequate idea of the 
inequalities of its surface. The surface, discoloured 
by the falling of the dirt from the adjacent heights, 
appears like a snow-drift that has outlasted the 
winter. The crevasses (crevices) in the ice are three 
or four feet wide at the surface, and narrow as they 
descend ; and, as you look into them, the ice appears 
of a greenish hue, transparent, and very beautiful. 
These crevices have been measured to a depth of 
three hundred and fifty feet ! Our guide gave us an 
Alpine staff, shod with an iron point, as a necessary 
safeguard on the Mer de Glace, and attended us 
most assiduously, taking good care not to underrate 
his services by diminishing the risks and difficulties. 
To me there appeared none of any magnitude, and 
I believe that with Hal, or any other expert boy, I 
might have crossed it. 



272 GENEVA. 

We returned to the pavilion to refresh ourselves 
and our guides. Jacques Simon had dropped a hint 
in ascending of the " bon verre de vin," which ex- 
pressed to the guide his employer's satisfaction ; and 
when I heard their merry voices as I passed the 
room where they were regaling themselves, I invol- 
untarily looked in to tell them how pleased I was to 
see them so cheerful. Their faces changed — they 
probably thought I had come to express some dis- 
trust of their discretion ; but the smiles reappeared, 
and they bowed, and bowed, and were " bien oblige, 
bien oblige." 

There are pretty specimens of agate and carnelian 
found in- this vicinity, for sale at the pavilion. I 
have a souvenir of the Montanvert of twofold value : 
some seeds of the Alpine rose, which Simon begged 
me to accept as a " petit cadeau." 



We returned to St. Martin's in a drizzling rain. 
I was surprised to see a little patch of ripe pump- 
kins on this high land. I asked a peasant-woman 
what use they made of them. " They were very 
good food," she said, "for pigs and poor people; 
not for great folk." A vision of our " thanksgiving 
pumpkin pies" passed before me, and I felt some- 
thing between a tear and a smile as I thought what 
good food we made them for our " great folk." 

Just before arriving at our inn in the twilight, a 
poor woman was crossing the road leading a goat 
with one hand and holding a pail on her head with 



GENEVA. 273 

the other. Our postillion trotted against her, knock- 
ed Ler down, jerked her pail on one side the road, 
and away scampered the goat on the other. We all 
called to him, in one breath, to stop ; but he did not 
heed us. Presently we encountered a priest. The 
postillion took off his cap, slackened his horses, and 
proceeded with reverent slowness till we were quite 
past the sacred person. Rather a striking illustra- 
tion of " letter-and-spirit" religion, was it not ? 

We were hardly housed before our hostess ap- 
peared with a large china bowl heaped with peach- 
es and grapes, and, just peeping out at the summit 
of the pile, my peasant friend's letter. She pre- 
sented it to me, saying, " Baptiste has left these for 
you. He is a good and honest lad, and I hope you 
will not forget his letter." Most assuredly I will 
not ; but, alas for its chances ! You can hardly 
imagine, my dear C, how pleasant such an acci- 
dental interchange of kindness is to travellers, cut 
off from their habitual social duties and relations. 
A traveller's progress need not be so barren of hu- 
manities as it is, if the art of " improving opportu- 
nities" (bless the good old Puritan phrase !) were 
better understood, or, rather, more faithfully studied. 
It is easy giving your halfpence to the beggar — giv- 
ing it can scarcely be called ; it is neither blessed to 
the giver nor to the receiver — it is a debt surlily 
paid to a clamorous creditor, and received without 
gratitude. But a kind look, a tone of sympathy, 
even if the words be not understood, finds a direct 
way to the human heart. If a certain friend of ours 



274 GENEVA. 

were to turn traveller, his track would be marked by- 
light in the eyes and smiles on the lips, as the sun's 
progress is by the reflection of its beams. 



My dear C, 
Geneva, October 17. — We have had a severe dis- 
appointment in being compelled to give up crossing 
the Simplon. That route was completely broken 
up by a severe storm some weeks since, and all the 
other most striking routes are more or less impair- 
ed, so that it is not deemed advisable for us, with 
our invalid, to attempt any other than Mont Cenis, 
which is always practicable and safe. We leave 
Geneva to-day, and we are looking and feeling 
very dismal. We have enjoyed here the benefits of 
a free government and a well-ordered and health- 
ful society, and we have received much hospitality. 
This we may find elsewhere ; but never will the 
happiness of a welcome to such a home as that of 
our friends at Chesne be repeated to us. Well, we 
have had it,«and we take with us their assured af- 
fection ; and our young people, though they will no 
more hear those dear voices calling them their 
" American children," have their faith in man con- 
firmed — this is a certain and indestructible good. 
They have seen a man who has passed through a 
period of European history which has tried men'sprin- 
ciples as with fire, without dimming his fine gold. 
They have seen that it is possible to live a lifetime 
with the " world's people," to enjoy success and re- 



GENEVA. 275 

ceive homage, and yet retain the modesty, fresh- 
ness, tenderness, and enthusiasm of youth ; and, 
better than all, a benevolence Godlike, for it falleth 
on the just and the unjust. 



END OF VOL. I. 



CATALOGUE OF BOOKS. 



Harper & Brothers, 82 Cliff-street, New- York, have 
just issued a new and complete catalogue of their pub- 
lications, which will be forwarded, without charge, to 
any part of the United States, upon application to them 
personally or by mail post paid. In this catalogue may 
be found over one thousand volumes, embracing every 
branch of literature, standard and imaginative. The at- 
tention of persons forming libraries, either private or 
public, is particularly directed to the great number of 
valuable standard historical and miscellaneous works 
comprised in the list. It will also be found to contain 
most of the works requisite to form a circulating library 
of a popular character; all of which may be obtained 
at reasonable prices (sixty per cent, less than books 
published in England) from the principal booksellers 
throughout the United States. 



LETTERS FROM ABROAD 



TO 



KINDRED AT HOME. 



" Well, John, I think we must own that God Almighty had a hand in making 
other countries besides ours."— The Brothers. 



BY THE AUTHOR OF 

" HOPE LESLIE," " POOR RICH MAN AND THE RICH POOR MAN,' 
" LIVE AND LET LIVE," &C, &C. 



IN TWO VOLUMES. 

VOL. II. 



NEW-YORK: 

HARPER & BROTHERS, 82 CLIFF-STREET. 

1841. 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1841, by 

Harper & Brothers, 

In the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New York. 



LETTERS, &c. 



JOURNEY TO LANSLEBOURG. 

Sunday Evening, October 20. 

Here we are, my dear C, at the foot of Mont 
Cenis, at the Hotel Royal, reading and writing by 
an excellent wood fire, the first we have had or 
needed. This inn was built by the order of Napo- 
Jeon, and K. and I have slept in the room he occu- 
pied, more soundly than he did, I fancy. 

Our first day's drive to Annecy was through a 
pretty country of hill and dale. The leaves were 
falling in showers, almost the only autumnal sign. 
The ground, highly cultivated, was looking as green 
as ours does on the first of September, and much as 
our Berkshire may a hundred years hence. I won- 
der if that lapse of time will bring us the conve- 
nience we find here, of extra horses at the foot of 
every long hill, ready to be attached to the travel- 
ler's carriage. 

Annecy is a little place, rendered interesting by its 
thrift — a singular quality in a Savoy town — and by 
its old chateaux and sanctuaries that have a name in 
history, religious and civil. I went out alone, w 7 hile 
the day w r as dawning, to the sanctuary where the 
bones of St. Francois de Sales and La Mere Chantal 



8 JOURNEY TO LANSLEBOURG. 

are permitted to lie side by side. " A tender friend- 
ship," says the pious Catholic, " subsisted between 
these saints." Protestant scandal does not allow this 
platonic character to the sentiment that united them ; 
but let religious pity keep close the veil which hides 
the history of feelings that a forced condition con- 
verted into crime. I like to enter a Catholic church 
in the gray of the morning, while the lights on the 
altar are struggling through the misty dawn, while 
the real people that glide in and drop down before 
the images and pictures are as shadowy as the 
pictures themselves; and the poor, old, haggard 
creatures come tottering in to say in the holy place, 
as it would seem, their last prayer ; and the busy 
peasant, with her basket on her arm and her child 
at her side, drops in to begin her day of toil with 
an act of worship. I saw in that dim sanctuary a 
scene that would make too long a story for a letter, 
dear C. When I entered, two persons (my dramatis 
personam) were kneeling before an altar, over which 
hung a painting representing the frail saint (if, in- 
deed, the Mere de Chaptal were frail) as triumph- 
antly trampling on temptation in the old form of 
the serpent. 

We stopped for a while at Aix to see baths fa- 
mous in the time of the Romans, and which are 
still in good preservation. The water resembles that 
of the hot springs of Virginia; its temperature is 
110° of Fahrenheit. Till we reached Chambery 
Savoy appeared fertile; and the hills in the ap- 
proach to this town, its capital, are covered with 



JOURNEY TO LANSLEBOURG. 9 

vineyards, and very beautiful, but the town itself, 
or so much of it as we saw, is horrid; its nar- 
row, dirty streets filled with beggars, soldiers, and 
priests. You may resolve the three classes into one. 
The beggar frankly begs, the priest begs, pleading 
the sanction of divine authority, and the soldier takes 
without the pains of begging. 

A priest in the court of our Chambery inn beset 
Francois for money to say masses for his dead : " Mes 
morts," replied our courier-philosopher, " Mes morts 
sont tous en paradis ;"* " and if they were not," he 
added, " what could such men as they do for them V* 
Alas for his Catholic faith in our heretical company ! 

The road from Chambery is continually ascend- 
ing, with Alps on each side, little towns pitched in 
among the rocks, and habitations sprinkled over the 
rough and sharp hill-sides, where it seems hard 
work for a few goats to find subsistence. I have 
seen many a patch of rye, that I could cover with my 
shawl, niched in among the rocks, and the people 
look truly like the offspring of this hard, niggard soil. 
They are of low stature and shrunken, and their skin 
like a shrivelled parchment. They reminded us of 
the Esquimaux, and the pointed cap and shaggy gar- 
ment are not dissimilar to the dress of the savage. 
Half of them, at least, have goitres, some so large as 
to be truly hideous " wallets of flesh." But far more 
revolting even than these poor wretches with their 
huge excrescences, are the Cretins ; an abounding 
species of idiot who infest us, clamorously begging 
* " My dead are all in paradise !" 



10 JOURNEY TO LANSLEBOURG. 

with a sort of brutish chattering, compared to which, 
the begging children's monotone chant, " Monsieur, 
donnez— moi — un peu-— la charite — s'il vous plait," 
is music The Savoyard is far down in the scale be- 
low the German peasant ; he will rise as soon as the 
pressure is removed ; these people are crushed irre- 
coverably. Various causes are assigned for their pre- 
vailing physical and mental diseases : unwholesome 
water, malaria, and inadequate and bad food suffi- 
ciently explain them. The children, to my astonish- 
ment, looked fat and healthy. It takes time to over- 
power the vigour of nature, and counteract the bles- 
ed effect of life in the open air. The people in the 
towns appear more healthy and in more comfortable 
condition than in the open country. I remarked 
among them some young women stout and comely 
enough, with a becoming kind of cap, with broad, 
stiffly-starched bands, which are so brought together 
and set off behind that they resemble white wings. 
They wear a black riband around the throat (prob- 
ably adopted to hide the goitre) fastened by a 
large broach, at which hangs a cross. The bot- 
toms of their skirts are ornamented with a narrow- 
coloured stripe, some with one, some with half a 
dozen. Francois tells us that a red stripe indicates 
a dowry of a hundred francs; but, as this is but 
courier information, I do not give it to you for verity. 
You know it is my habit to walk whenever I can, 
and to talk with the people by the way-side ; and 
as the roads have been heavy ever since we left Ge- 
neva, and our voiturier is a " merciful man" to his 



JOURNEY TO LANSLEBOURG. 11 

beast, I have had this indulgence for many a mile. 
The Savoyards speak French well, though they use 
a patois among themselves. I stopped yesterday to 
talk to some women who were washing around a 
fountain on their knees. One of them said, in reply 
to my inquiry, " It was hard enough 1" " But," said 
I, " you should have cushions to kneel on." " Ah, 
oui, madame, mais les pauvres ne sont pas les rich- 
es ;"* there was a world of meaning in this truism. 

I joined a peasant-girl in the twilight last even- 
ing who, after spending her whole day in tending 
her cow at an hour's walk from her house, was 
carrying home her five bottles of milk, the product 
of the cow. What would our peasant-girls think of 
such a life 1 Their leisurely, lady-like afternoons 
and unmeasured abundance pass in vision before me 
as I ask the question. 

My dear C, how often do I mentally thank God 
for the condition of our working people ! My poor 
way-side friend told me she lived on barley, milk, 
and potatoes ; that she never ate meat ; " how could 
she when she had no money to buy it ?" But our 
host at Modane, who is a round, full-fed, jolly widow- 
er, gives a different version of the poor's condition, 
which, from his sunny position, he looks down upon 
quite cheerily. "They have salted meat for win- 
ter," he says, " occasionally a bottle of wine, and 
plenty of brandy. They can work at night by 
oil made from nuts and flaxseed; they have a por- 
tion of wood from the commune, . and they econ- 
* " Ah, yes, ma'am ; but the poor are not the rich." 



12 JOURNEY TO LANSLEBOURG. 

omize by living in the winter in the stable !" This 
is the common discrepancy between the rich man's 
account of the poor and the poor man's own story. 

Francois says, " What think you the charitable 
send them for medicine when they are ill? why, 
bread ; and they get well, and live to a hundred or 
even a hundred and twenty years !" Perhaps some 
of our feasting Dives, victims of turtle-soup, pates 
de foie gras, and — calomel, might envy these poor 
wretches, who find in a wh eaten loaf " Nature's 
sweet restorative." Life is a " tesselated pavement, 
here a bit of black stone and there a bit of white ;" 
it is not all black even to the Savoyard mountaineer. 

Even in Savoy the " schoolmaster is abroad." 
While some of our party were lunching at St. Mi- 
chel, K. and I walked on. Our first poste-restante 
w T as on the pedestal of a crucifix. While we sat 
there, a pretty young mother came out of a house 
opposite with her child. I called the little tottler 
to me, and the mother followed. What a nice let- 
ter of introduction is a child ! We entered into con- 
versation. She told me all the children in St. Mi- 
chel went to school ; that they had two schools for 
the poor ; one supported by the commune, and an- 
other where each child paid three francs per month. 
The little ten-months'-old thing gave me her hand 
at parting, and the mother said, "Au revoir, ma- 
dame." " Au revoir /" where may that be ? 

There was an inscription on the cross under 
which we were sitting, purporting that a certain 
bishop granted an indulgence of forty days to who- 



JOURNEY TO LANSLEBOURG. 13 

ever should say a paternoster, an ave, and perform 
an act of contrition before that crucifix. I asked 
a good-humoured peasant-girl whom we joined (the 
road is thronging with peasants of all ages) " what 
was meant by the act of contrition." She said it 
was a prayer of confession and humiliation, begin- 
ning, " Oh, mon Dieu, je me repens," &c, and that 
the " indulgence" was forty days' deduction from 
the time for which the soul prayed for w r as sen- 
tenced to purgatory. " This," thought I, " is an 
easy act, and the bishop barters the indulgence at 
a bargain !" But the pharasaic feeling was but 
momentary, my dear C, and I was ashamed when 
I thought how many w T eary creatures had paused 
there and laid down their burdens, wdiile, with a 
simple faith, they performed their act of worship 
and humiliation, and of love for the departed. When 
shall we learn to reverence the spirit and disregard 
the form ? 

We have had mists and rain ever since w T e left 
Chambery, but the picturesqueness of our journey 
has been rather heightened by this state of the at- 
mosphere. Mist, you know, sometimes gives a char- 
acter of sublimity to the molehills which we call 
mountains at home ; you may then imagine what its 
effect must be here, where you look up to mountains 
folding over mountains, from valleys that you can 
almost span, and see the rocky ramparts lost in the 
clouds ; or, perhaps, as the mist drops down and their 
snowy pinnacles catch a passing sunbeam, glitter- 
ing, as it seems, in mid heaven. The cascades 

Vol. II.— B 



14 JOURNEY TO SUS A. 

which pour over the precipices feed with a thousand 
rivulets the Arc, the beautiful stream that rushes 
along the valley. 



Susa, Piedmont, October 21. 

We have crossed the Alps, my dear C, and are 
in Italy, but not quite so easily as I write it. The 
weather is as much a matter of speculation to those 
who are about to make a passage of the Alps as if they 
were going to sea. This morning at three I was 
looking out from my window, and found it perfectly 
clear. My old familiar friends were shining down 
on the valley of Lanslebourg, Orion on his throne, 
and Jupiter glittering over one of the mountain-pin- 
nacles. " Now," thought I, " we are sure of a fine 
day." But when Francois came round to our doors 
with his customary reveille, " Gate oope" (Francois 
always speaks English in the hearing of the na- 
tives !) the sky was overcast. We were early astir, 
which, though " both healthful and good husband- 
ry," is only the virtue of necessity with us. 

We took from Lanslebourg five mules to drag 
up our carriage. Each mule, of course, had his 
muleteer. The voiturier followed with his horses ; 
and Francois, whose devious motions often re- 
mind me of Wamba's, was at the side of the car- 
riage, before, or behind, wherever he found the 
best listeners. The " point culminant" of this pass 
is six thousand seven hundred and eighty feet above 
the level of the sea, but only two thousand feet 



JOURNEY TO SUSA. 15 

above the valley of Lanslebourg. This was the 
least difficult pass into Italy before Napoleon came 
to make a broad and easy way over these frightful 
barriers. Charlemagne led an army over Mont 
Cenis in the ninth century;* and this was, I be- 
lieve, always the route by which the Frederics and 
their successors brought their German barbarians 
down upon the plains of Italy. The Chevalier Fab- 
broni was the engineer of this road, and was seven 
years in bringing it to its present perfection. The 
road is carried up the face of the mountain by easy 
zigzags. Again and again we turned and dragged 
on our weary way, and yet we seemed no farther 
from Lanslebourg, which was always directly under 
us ; but we saw by our joyous " compagnon de voy- 
age," the Arc, diminishing to a thread, that we were 
making progress. There are twenty-three houses 
of refuge (ricoveri) at intervals along this pass. 
Near some of them the traveller is, at particular sea- 
sons, in danger from avalanches, and at all are 
men and means of succour, kept by the government. 
The girls and I walked up the greater part of the 
way, not following the road, but taking the sharp 
cross-cuts. I had some talk with our chief mule- 
teer, a clever man. Our conversation naturally 
turned on Napoleon, " small in stature and great 
in mind," he said ; " but a bloody man, that cared 
not how many he sacrificed to his ambition. He 
made a beautiful road, not for our good, but to get 

* The Hospice on Mont Cenis, till very recently a monastery, was 
instituted by Charlemagne. 



16 JOURNEY TO SUSA. 

his cannon into Italy. Cependant," he concluded, 
" ceux qui Paiment et ceux qui ne Paiment pas con- 
fessed qu'il n'y a plus de tetes comme celle-la I" 
(" After all, those who like him, and those who like 
him not, must own that there is no head left equal 
to his.") 

As we ascended we got a sprinkling, and, at the 
turns, the mist was driving at a rate to be no faint 
remembrancer of the gust from behind the sheet of 
water at Niagara. I went into a ricovero to dry my 
feet. The good dame told me they are often so buri- 
ed in snow in winter that she does not step her foot 
out of doors from fall to spring. There was a baby 
in the cradle. Here they are born, and live, and may 
die, for her husband has been cantonnier here for four- 
teen years. He receives the highest pay — thirty sous 
a day, and his house and firewood; not nearly so 
much as you pay a man-servant who has his food from 
your table and food as good as yours, and whose life, 
compared with these poor people's, is a perfect holy- 
day. Our prudent voiturier dismissed the mules be- 
fore passing the Savoy barrier, to avoid the tariff of 
five francs on each animal attached to a carnage ; 
a tax which goes towards maintaining the road. 
"We then gave the bonne main to the muleteers ; a 
liberal one, I fancy, from the abundance of their 
bows, and their cordial " bons voyages !" 

Our guide-book had promised us " a tolerable 
inn," and a regale of trout from the lake ; but, un- 
luckily, we went into the kitchen while a fire was 
kindling in the salon, and the floor, strewn with egg- 



JOURNEY TO SUSA. 17 

shells, bones, and vegetable refuse, cured our appe- 
tites, albeit we are not over-nice travellers. These 
mountain trout have been from time immemorial a 
source of revenue, and their only one, to the monks 
of the Hospice. The Bishop of Susa has lately put 
forth the lion's claim, and the poor fathers have 
been driven away. After passing the plain of Mont 
Cenis, in which this lake lies, we began descending 
a broad, smooth road, in many parts cut through the 
solid rock. Wherever it is necessary to have an ar- 
tificial support, it is made by a massy wall of ma- 
sonry. The cascades, which would dash athwart the 
road, are conveyed underneath by aqueducts, and are 
let out on the lower side through two openings, 
doors, windows, mouths, or whatever you please to 
call them. These waterfalls are the children of 
the scene, full of life and beauty ; we needed their 
cheerful voices, for the mist became clouds, and 
we actually seemed rolling along on them. We 
saw nothing, and, after a little while, these small, 
sweet voices, with every other sound, were overpow- 
ered by the rushing of a cataract below us. We 
were awed and silent. At this moment, two strong, 
wild-looking wretches burst out upon us. Whether 
they came from above or below we could not tell. 
They thrust their hands into the carriage, vehement- 
ly demanding charity, and looking very much as if 
they had a good will to take what we had no will to 
give. Bacicia cracked his whip at them ; this had 
no effect : he addressed it to his horses, and this had ; 
for they brought us within a very few minutes in 

B2 



18 SUSA. 

sight of a ricovero, and our pursuers withdrew. 
Francois and the voiturier insist they meant mischief, 
and, since we have escaped the danger, we are quite 
willing to believe in it. After going down, down, 
down, the mist became less dense, the trees began to 
appear, then the outlines of the hills, and, when we 
reached Molaret, a group of little dwellings on the 
hill-side, we were in a clear atmosphere, and the 
beautiful plains of Italy lay outspread beneath us in 
a golden, glowing light. What a contrast to the 
stern, wild scene from which we had emerged, was 
their abundance, habitancy, warmth, and smiling 
loveliness. Francois sprang over the carriage wheel, 
clapping his hands and shouting, " Voila mon pays!" 
There were tears in all our eyes as well as in his, 
for strong emotion, of whatever kind, brings them ; 
and who could for the first time look Italy in the 
face without emotion — beautiful, beautiful Italy ! 

Susa appeared quite near enough for us to have 
jumped down into its cheerful streets ; but we had 
still ten miles of this most gently-descending road 
down a mountain of most ungentle steepness. Think 
of going down for twenty-five consecutive miles! 
but we are down, and are looking up at the mount- 
ain-walls which God has set around this fairest of 
lands. Susa is a cheerful little town in the midst 
of vine-covered and broken hills, which appear 
like the advanced guard of the Alps. Villages 
and solitary dwellings are terraced (K. says bur- 
rowed) on the steep acclivities, and are so nearly 
of the colour of the rocks and soil that they are 



TURIN. 19 

scarcely distinguishable from them; and positions 
seem to have been selected for the churches and 
monasteries of such difficult access, as to give the 
climbing to them the virtue of a penance. And, 
finally, there is a background of what we are be- 
ginning to think an indispensable component part of a 
finished landscape, summits white with eternal snows. 
On one side of our inn is a piazza,* on the other a 
river. We have already been out to see an old Ro- 
man arch ; our path has been crossed by a proces- 
sion of priests; we have been beset by beggars; 
and we have come in to give our orders to a came- 
riero ;f in short, we are in Italy. 



Turin, 23. — We arrived here last evening, and 
entered the town by a magnificent avenue. Tu- 
rin is a very cheerful town, with some 80,000 in- 
habitants; a gay capital rather, for it is the capi- 
tal of Piedmont, and was anciently of Liguria. You 
see how, on the very threshold of Italy, we instinct- 
ively turn from what is to what was. Turin is 
said to have grown one fifth in the last ten years. 
This singular circumstance in Italian history is, I 
believe, owing to the fostering care and presence of 

* Piazza is any open public space in a town surrounded with 
buildings. I know no English word tbat answers to it. " Square" 
it is not, for it is of every conceivable form and " without form,'* 
but never " void." 

f In many Italian inns tbe services of the chambermaid are per- 
formed by men ; but the general deference to English customs is 
doing away, on the travelled routes, with this annoyance. 



20 TURIN. 

Charles Albert, the reigning monarch, styled every- 
where in Piedmont " the munificent," but better 
known to us as the treacherous Prince of Carignani. 
We are at the Hotel de PEurope Piazza Castello ; 
and as it is the best inn and best position in the 
town, you may like to know precisely our condition 
in it. We occupy a suite of apartments on the sec- 
ond story. Our drawing-room has sofa-bedsteads, 
and is converted into a bedroom at night ; and for 
these rooms, with a large ante-room, we pay twen- 
ty-four francs a day. They have silk hangings, par- 
tition walls at least four feet thick, double doors, 
floors inlaid of different-coloured woods, and painted 
ceilings hung with paintings and exquisite draw- 
ings of broken columns and old friezes, and are so 
richly furnished that they almost put my eyes out, 
after our wretched Savoy inns. I am sitting by 
a window open on to a balcony that overlooks the 
piazza, and I will describe it to you as it is at this 
moment. The piazza is as large as St. John's Park; 
opposite to us is the king's palace, with an enclos- 
ure ; on our right, the Palazzo madama, or queen's 
palace ; on our left, the opening into the fine street 
by which we entered the town, and a row of lofty 
houses, with an arcade to the low r er story. Our 
hotel forms one of a similar range on this side. 

Carriages and carts are crossing and recrossing, 
and a few busy people seem to be driving forward 
with some object before them ; but these are ex- 
ceptions. Here is a little company of Savoyard mu- 



TURIN. 21 

sicians — I know them by their costume* — a woman, 
with a guitar, singing national airs, accompanied by 
a man with a harp, and a boy with a violin. A 
ring of soldiers gathers round them ; loungers drop 
in on all sides; priests and peasants, plenty of 
priests. There may be three or four hundred per- 
sons in the ring. There comes the royal carriage 
through the palace-gate ; the ring breaks ; a line is 
formed, and all hats are off. A juggler enters upon 
the scene, and again the circle forms. There goes 
a procession of nuns, w 7 ith their superior at their 
head, holding aloft a black cross. Near the palazzo 
madama stand a knot of Piedmontese peasants; 
old women, with wrinkles ploughed in deep furrows, 
and white caps wired up into a sort of tower, and 
loaded with an unmeasurable quantity of gay-col- 
oured ribands and artificial flowers ; there are two 
very pretty young peasant-girls beside them, with a 
sort of gipsy hat, with low crowns and immense 
brims, and a bunch of flowers one side. 

Here are mendicant friars, with long beards, 
bare heads, gray cloaks tied with hempen cords, 
and sandals on their otherwise bare feet. The king 
appears on horseback, with officers attendant, and 
servants in scarlet livery, and again the ring breaks 
and all hats are doffed. 

Now, my dear C, this may be very tiresome to 
you, since I cannot make it vivid to your mental, as 

* There is a striking variety in the appearance and costume of the 
people of Turin. Sardinia, Savoy, and Genoa are included in the 
King of Piedmont's dominions. 



22 TURIN. 

it is to my bodily eye ; but to me it seems as if the 
world had indeed turned into a stage, and the men 
and women into players, and actors of some poetic 
dream of my youth. And as I have set down just 
what I have seen, and nothing that I have not seen 
since I sat at this window, as it is not a festa-day, 
and not more than ten o'clock A.M., it may be cu- 
rious to you to compare life here with life in our 
working-day world. 



We have just returned from a drive. Turin pleas- 
es us. The streets are as regular as those of Phila- 
delphia; but here the resemblance ends, as these 
streets sometimes terminate in a long and superb 
avenue, and sometimes the perspective finishes with 
a church or a palace. The houses are regular, too, 
but twice as high as ours (don't count feet and inch- 
es against me), and built of a light stone. First we 
went to a new bridge over the Doria, a single arch, 
and reckoned the most beautiful bridge of its kind 
in the world. While the bridge was constructing, 
its stability was doubted, and there were clamorous 
predictions that when the scaffolding was removed 
it would fall. When it was finished, the architect 
placed himself under the centre of the arch and or- 
dered the supports to be taken away— cross or 
crown — crown it proved ! We then went to the 
Church of the Consolata to see a famous silver stat- 
ue of the Virgin, made to commemorate her saving 
Turin from the cholera ! Most wretched beggars 



TURIN. 23 

followed us to the church-door ; and when I con- 
trasted its silver shrine and gorgeous ornaments 
with their squalid poverty, I remembered the apos- 
tolic charity, " Silver and gold / have not, but such 
as I have give I unto you !" 

We drove through the new quarter of the town, 
where there are fine fresh rows of houses, and a 
most natural home-odour of brick and mortar. In 
short, we have been to see bridges, statues, church- 
es, a botanic garden, a museum of most rare Egyp- 
tian antiquities, a Pharaoh (huge enough to have 
eaten up the Israelites), an effigy which Champol- 
lion pronounced to be contemporary with Abram ! 
And we have been to the Palazzo madama, where 
strangers are admitted, without fee, to a gallery of 
very fine paintings ; as it is the first we have seen, 
please give me due credit for not talking very learn- 
edly of Carlo Dolci's, Guido's, Murillo's, &c. 

But we have seen something here that will prob- 
ably interest you more than all the pictures in Italy, 
Silvio Pellico. He lives near Turin as librarian to 
a certain marchesa. We wrote him a note, and 
asked the privilege of paying our respects to him, 
on the ground of being able to give him news of 
his friends, and our dear friends, the exiles, who 
were his companions at Spielberg. He came imme- 
diately to us. He is of low stature and slightly 
made, a sort of etching of a man, with delicate and 
symmetrical features, just enough body to gravitate 
and keep the spirit from its natural upward flight — 
a more shadowy Dr. Channing ! His manners have 



24 TUB IN. 

a sweetness, gentleness, and low tone that cor- 
respond well with his spiritual appearance. He 
was gratified with our good tidings of his friends, 
and much interested with our account of his god- 
child, Maroncelli's little Silvia. His parents Tiave 
died within a year or two. " Dieu m'a fait la 
grace," he said, " de les revoir en sortant de la pris- 
on. Dieu fait tout pour notre mieux ; c'est cette 
conviction qui m'a soutenu et qui me soutient en- 
core."* In reply to his saying that he lived a life 
of retirement, and had few acquaintances in Turin, 
we told him that he had friends all over the world. 
" That proves," he said, " that there are everywhere 
6 belles ames.' " His looks, his manner, his voice, 
and every word he spoke, were in harmony with his 
book, certainly one of the most remarkable produc- 
tions of our day. 

I have been very sorry to hear some of his coun- 
trymen speak distrustfully of Pellico, and express an 
opinion, a reluctant one, that he had sunken into 
willing subjection to political despotism and priestly 
craft. It is even said that he has joined the order 
of Jesuits. I do not believe this, nor have I heard 
any evidence adduced in support of it that tends to 
invalidate the proof of the incorruptibility of Pellico's 
soul contained in Le mie prigioni. He is a saint 
that cannot fall from grace. There seems to me no- 
thing in his present unqualified submission incom- 

* " God granted me the mercy of seeing my parents when I came 
out of prison. God orders all for our best good. It is this conviction 
•which has hitherto supported and still sustains me." 



TURIN. 25 

patible with his former history and professions. His 
phase of the Christian character has always been 
that of sufferance. He is the gentle Melancthon, not 
the bold and valiant Luther j the loving John, not 
the fearless Paul. 



Francois is a Piedmontese, and has now returned 
to his country for the first time after pursuing suc- 
cessfully his courier career for six years. He went 
last evening to see his family, and carried them a 
handful of Geneva trinkets ; and this morning, after 
a whole night's vigil and revel with them, he 
brought his father and mother to see us; she a 
buxom stepdame, wearing a cap covered with red 
ribands, and artificial flowers, and earrings, and a 
string of gold heads as big as Lima beans. Good 
gold, Francois assures us they are, and that these 
ornaments are the most esteemed signs of the peasant's 
wealth, and are transmitted from generation to gen- 
eration. Happy should be the condition of the peas- 
ant in the rich spacious plains around us. 

Turin is at the foot of the Alps, watered by the 
Po and the Doria, and enriched with corn, the vine, 
and the mulberry. The Muscat grape grows here in 
the greatest perfection and abundance. It is most 
delicious, and so is the Asti wine made from it, 
which, we are told, is too delicate for transporta- 
tion. We find always, in a rich agricultural coun- 
try, as we have found here, excellent bread and 
butter. They make bread in a form which they 

Vol. II.— C 



26 VERCEIL. 

call grisane, a sort of bread-canes or fagots. Bun- 
dles of them are placed at the head and foot of the 
table. The dwellers in the poor, cold valley of 
Lanslebourg bring all their wheaten bread from 
Chambery, not less than eighty miles, and we paid 
for our fare accordingly. 



We passed our first night after leaving Turin at 
Cigliano, a considerable place on a great route. To 
give you an idea of what an Italian inn is, which 
English travel has not yet remodelled, I will set 
down our breakfast service : tumblers for teacups, 
a tureen and ladle for boiled milk, and a pudding- 
dish for a slop-bowl ! 

We lunched at Verceil the second day, a place 
that I remember figures on the scene in Sismondi's 
Italian Republics, and which occupies half a page in 
our guide-book, setting forth churches, chapels, and 
pictures to be seen, and how Marius gained a victory 
under its walls, and how Nero built a temple here. 
To us it appeared a most disagreeable place ; and, if I 
built anything, it would be an altar with an ex voto 
representing our carriage driving out of it. We 
went to the market-place, which was filled with ugly 
old women sitting behind stacks— Alps of apricots, 
pears, grapes, pomegranates, and most splendid 
peaches, but neither soft nor flavorous. I have eaten 
but one peach since I came to Europe that would 
be thought above par in New-York or Philadelphia ! 
The market-place in Verceil was filled with idle 



Verc^iL. '* - 27 

men, who collected about us and stared So unmerci- 
fully at the girls that they clung to me, and I felt, 
for the first time in my life, rather Duenna-ish, and 
glad enough to get back to the hotel. Accustomed 
as we have been to the quiet ways of going on in 
Germany and Switzerland, where we felt as much 
freedom as in our own country, it is very annoying 
lo be cut off at once from the free use and enjoy- 
ment of our faculties. Young women cannot walk 
out here without a male attendant, or a woman 
pretty well stricken in years. 

Bacicia, who ordinarily is no dawdler, dawdled 
at the Verceil inn till we were out of patience. His 
delay was explained when we found the bridge 
which crosses the Sesia, a mile from the town, was 
impassable for the carriage ; there was a ferry-boat, 
but our way was obstructed by great numbers of 
carts and carriages, which had precedence of us. 
Bacicia knew it was market-day, and had foreseen 
this exigency, and calculated that we should be 
driven back to Verceil by the lateness of the hour, 
and thus he should gain twenty francs, and a day's 
rest for his horses. Franqois' imagination conjured 
up robbers pouring in with the fast-coming night 
from Turin, Milan, and Genoa, but our Yankee wit 
was not to be outwitted by our tricky voiturier, nor 
our resolution vanquished by a courier's staple alarms; 
so we seated ourselves on the bridge, and watched the 
progress of the miserable little boat, which occupied 
twenty-five minutes in loading, crossing, unloading, 
reloading, and recrossing. It had five passages to 

C2 



28 JOURNEY TO MILAN. 

make before our turn came. We tried in vain to buy 
a precedence, which the poor market-people would 
gladly have sold us, but the superintending gens 
d'armes forbade this traffic. In the mean time, up 
drove a coach with post-horses, and went before us 
all. " Ah," said Francois, who was walking up and 
down in a brigand fever, " les gouvernments sont tous 
des voleurs I" The sun was just sinking as we got 
into our carriage, and we had yet fifteen miles to 
travel ; but the moon rose upon us, and, though Fran- 
cois once persuaded us to stop and look at some 
bed-rooms in a filthy inn, we came on to Navarro, 
our appointed sleeping-place, cheerfully and safely. 
The truth is, there is very little danger of meeting 
" gentlemen of the road" at the present time on the 
great routes of Italy. The governments are vigilant, 
and their licensed robbers are too strong for volun- 
teer companies. Poor Francois' fears were genuine 
and inherited. His mother actually died of the con- 
sequences of fright from an attack of highwaymen a 
few days before his birth. 






We crossed the Ticino, ten miles from Navarro, 
on a massive granite-bridge, and there entered the 
Lombardo-Venitian kingdom, and at the little town 
of Buffalero our carriage was taken possession of 
by Austrian soldiers, ready to do the courteous hon- 
ours of welcome which their imperial master ap- 
points to strangers. As we were not Quixotic 
enough to attempt to reform the code of national 



JOURNEY TO MILAN. 29 

morals, we directed Francois to pay the customary 
fee to save our imperials from a ransacking, and to 
get the necessary certificate that they were filled 
with honest gowns, skirts, &c. What a disgrace to 
civilized Europe are these annoying delays and pet- 
ty robberies !* Thank Heaven, we have passed our 
lives exempt from them, as we are often reminded 
by Francois' exclamation, " Que votre pays est heu- 
reux ; ah, c'est le pays de la jolie liberte" (" Yours 
is a happy country ; the country of liberty !") 

The country between Turin and Milan is fertile 
beyond description. You have often heard, my 
dear C, of the rich plains of Lombardy, watered 
by rivers and intersected with canals ; but you can 
hardly imagine the perfection of its husbandry. The 
corn is now six — eight inches high, and the ground 
as green as ours in June, and we have reached, re- 
member, the twenty-sixth of October ! The road is 
bordered with mulberry -trees. The country is too 
level for picturesque beauty, and it has not the 
highest charm of agricultural life. There are no 
signs of rural cheerfulness; no look of habitancy. 
The cultivators live in compact, dirty little villa- 
ges. The very few country-houses are surrounded 
with high walls, with their lower windows grated ; 

* The Italians suffer more from police regulations than strangers. 
A Milanese lady, whose hushand has a large patrimonial estate in 
Piedmont, told me they had given up going to it on account of the 
indignities she was obliged to suffer at Buffalero, the frontier, where 
a room and female officers are appointed to undress and search Ital- 
ian ladies. The travel in our country would be somewhat diminish- 
ed if we had such regulations on the frontiers of Pennsylvania and 
New-York, or Massachusetts. 

C2 



30 MILAN. 

even the barn windows have this jail-like provision. 
What a state of morals and government does this 
suggest ! what a contrast to rural life in England ! 
what comparisons to the condition of things in our 
little village of S., where a certain friend of ours 
fastens her outer-door with a carving-knife, leaving 
all her plate unlocked in a pantry hard by, and only 
puts in a second knife when she hears that a thief 
has been marauding some fifty miles off. " Oh, pays 
heureux !" Francois mav well exclaim, and we 
repeat. 



Milan, 27. — Thanks to all our friends, dear C, 
for the half bushel of letters we have received here 
after a month's fasting, and five days less than a 
month old ! Francois brought us from the postoffice 
forty francs worth — forty ! forty thousand. We 
may shrink from other expenses, but letters are an 
indispensable luxury — at this distance from you 
all, a necessary of life. What a pleasant even- 
ing's reading we had, here a tear dropping, and 
there a laugh bursting forth. Home-voices rung in 
our ears, home-faces smiled ; we were at S. and L. ; 
and I think I shall never forget the shock and con- 
fusion in our ideas when the door opened for an in- 
quiry about the " lampa di notteP We were disen- 
chanted ; the hills and valleys of Berkshire vanished, 
and here we were at the Hotel de Ville, in a lofty 
apartment, with painted ceilings, pictures of Vesu- 
vius, and a plaster-stove surmounted with a statue ! 



MILAN. 31 

Yes, dear C, we are in Milan, once the illustrious 
capital of Cisalpine Gaul, and still more illustrious 
as the metropolis of Lombardy and queen of the 
northern Italian republics in the glorious days of 
their successful struggles against the Frederics and 
the Henrys of Germany ; and, as we think with our 
Democratic principles, yet more glorious for the re- 
sistance of the people to the nobles.* Images of 
ecclesiastical pomp and power, of military occu- 
pancy, and processions ; of the exit and return of the 
Caroccio — the Lombard Ark of the Covenant — of 
art, industry, and riches, throng upon us. But, as 
you know, dear C, it is nothing so far gone and im- 
personal as its history, that makes Milan the sacred 
shrine it is in our pilgrimage. Here is the memory 
of our friends. This was the scene of their high 
aspirations and their keen disappointments, perhaps 
of their keenest suffering. Here they sowed in tears 
what I trust those who come after them will reap 
in joy. f 

* The rising of the people of Milan in the eleventh century upon 
the nobles, and the deadly war they made upon them in their fortified 
castles within the walls of the city, till they drove them forth in or- 
der to revenge the insult done to one of their body whom a noble 
struck with his cane in midday in the open street, is an evidence of 
the spirit of equal rights hardly surpassed in our Democratic age. 

f The persons here alluded to are the Italian gentlemen concerned 
in the affair of 1821, at the head of whom stood the distinguished 
Milanese, Count Confalioneri, styled by Sir James Mackintosh 
u Italy's noblest son." These gentlemen, after seventeen years im- 
prisonment and the horrors of Spielberg (which have been partially 
exposed by Pellico, Maroncelli, and Andreani), were exiled to Amer- 
ica, where circumstances threw them into intimate intercourse with 
my family. I could wish that those who ignorantly think lightly 



32 MILAN. 

We have been disappointed to find that most of 
the persons to whom our letters are addressed are 
still at their villas. We have sent them, however, 
notwithstanding we hear that an American gentle- 
man who brought a letter from one of our exile- 
friends, was ordered by the police to leave Milan 
within twelve hours. A caravan consisting of one 
invalid gentleman and five obscure womankind can 
scarcely awaken the jealousy even of an Austrian 
police. 



The friends of our friends have come in from their 
country residences to honour the letters addressed to 
them, and have received us with unmeasured cordi- 
ality. It is cold, Novemberish, and raining, as it has 
been for the last ten days ; but, in spite of it, we have 
had a very agreeable drive about the city with the 
brothers C — a. The streets are labyrinthian, and 
are just now looking dull and dingy enough. The 
gay people have not yet returned from their summer 
retreats, and of the 140,000 inhabitants of Milan we 
see only bourgeois, soldiers, priests, and women in 

and speak disparagingly of "Italians" could know these men, who 
have resisted and overcome seventeen years of trials and tempt- 
ations such as human nature has rarely been subjected to. We 
honour our fathers for the few years of difficulty through which 
-they struggled; and can we refuse our homage to these men, who 
sacrificed everything, and forever, that man holds most dear, to 
the sacred cause of freedom and truth ? and, let me ask, what should 
we in reason infer of the nation whence they came ? surely that there 
are many ready " to go and do likewise." 



MILAN. 33 

veils (instead of bonnets) pattering to mass. The 
streets are paved with small round stones, with a 
double wheel -track of granite brought from the 
shores of Maggiore and Como, the blocks so nicely 
joined that the wheels roll as smoothly and almost 
as rapidly as over rails, and they are so granulated 
that there is no danger of the horse slipping. The 
houses are large ; you might turn half a dozen of 
ours into one of them ; and the palaces magnificent, 
as you may imagine from our mistaking La Casa 
Saporetti for La Scala, which we had been forewarn- 
ed was the largest opera-house in Europe. 

We drove to the Arch of Peace, the fit termination 
for his Simplon road, and adornment of his Cisalpine 
republic, projected by Napoleon, but not finished till 
within the last few months. The work was begun 
in 1807, and the first artists were employed on 
statues and bas-reliefs intended to illustrate the 
most brilliant events of Napoleon's life. When the 
work was finished his power and life had ended; 
and art, too often the passive slave of tyrants, was 
compelled to sacrifice truth and beauty, to desecrate 
its own work, by cutting off Napoleon's head (that 
noble head made to be eternized in marble), and 
substituting in its place the imbecile head and mean 
features of the Emperor Francis. And poor Joseph- 
ine, who had no tendencies to such an apotheosis, is 
transformed into the cold Goddess of Wisdom, and 
wears Minerva's casque. Illustrations of Napoleon's 
victories, and the great political eras of his life, are 
made sometimes, by the mere substitution of names, 



34 MILAN. 

to stand for epochs in Austrian history, with what 
veri-similitude you may imagine. Where this spe- 
cies of travesty was impossible, new blocks of marble 
have been substituted, which may be detected by the 
difference of shade. The structure is seventy-five 
feet in height and seventy-three feet in breadth. 
The columns, which are extremely beautiful, are thir- 
ty-eight and a half feet high. The arch is sur- 
mounted by a figure of Victory with four horses at- 
tached to a car in full career. The details are elab- 
orate and highly finished, and the whole gave me 
some idea of what Italy must have been in the days 
of the Romans, when their monuments were fresh 
and unimpaired, and of the dazzling whiteness of 
this. 

In entering the city from the Simplon road through 
this arch, you come upon a very noble place (piazza 
d'armi), where the soldiers are exercised. We 
crossed this to an amphitheatre built by Napoleon, 
and first opened for a fete after the peace of Tilsit. 
It was designed for feats of arms and equestrian ex- 
ercises. It is of an elliptical form, and surrounded 
by tiers of seats, where 30,000 people may be seat- 
ed — they are now grass-grown ! 

We next visited the Brera, formerly a college of 
the Jesuits, but now secularized and liberalized by a 
consecration to the arts and sciences. We did not 
take any portion of our brief time to walk through 
the library and look at the outsides of the 100,000 
volumes there. Once up the staircase where, on the 
landing-places, are the statues of Parini, Monti, and 



MILAN. 35 

Beccaria, we spent all our time in the gallery enjoy- 
ing its priceless pictures. I first sought out Guerci- 
no's " sending away Hagar," and, once found, it is 
difficult to leave it. The colouring and composi- 
tion is, as it should always be, made subservient to 
the moral effect — the outer reveals the inner man. 
In Abraham, the Jewish patriarch, the head of the 
chosen people, you see the patriot triumphing over 
the father and lover ; Hagar, with her face steeped 
in tears, is the loving girl urging the claim of true 
and tender passion against what seems to her an in- 
credible sentence; Sara is the very personification 
of " legal rights ;" and the poor little boy, burying 
his face in his mother's gown, is the ruined favourite. 

We were shown in an obscure apartment a su- 
perb bronze statue of Napoleon by Canova ; a grand 
work, but strangely failing in resemblance. Till 
within two years, the Austrians have kept it hidden 
in a cellar — buried alive. One cannot but smile at 
their terror at Napoleon's mere effigy. 

As we were passing through one of the rooms, C. 
C — a pointed to the bust of the Emperor Francis 
with an inscription, in which he is called " our fa- 
ther." " Our father /" he repeated ; " Gaetano's 
and mine P' His emphasis recalled their reasons 
for a filial sentiment, C. having been imprisoned 
by the " good Francis" three years, and his brother 
seventeen ! While we were driving, the gentlemen 
pointed out to us the cannon, kept always loaded, 
guarded, and pointed against the town — against the 
homes of its citizens ! 



36 MILAN. 

We saw in the refectory of the old monastery of 
S. Marie delle Grazie one of the world's wonders, 
Leonardo da Vinci's " Last Supper," painted on the 
wall, and now in parts so faded as to be nearly ob- 
literated. Time and the elements have not been its 
worst enemies. The wall was whitewashed, and a 
door cut through it by a decree of the chapter, that 
the monks might have their dinner served hot from 
the adjoining kitchen. To complete the desecration, 
the door was cut through the figure of our Saviour. 
Would it not be a Dantesque punishment for these 
brutish epicures to be condemned to a purgatorio 
w T here they should forever enact " wall and moon- 
shine," and eat only cold dinners 1 

Leonardo, like other people who have too many 
irons in the fire (for he was painter, sculptor, archi- 
tect, and author), let some of them grow cold; he 
was so long about this picture that the Prior of the 
convent reproached him bitterly, and he took his re- 
venge by making Judas' head a fac-simile of the 
Prior's. Vasari has recorded Leonardo's reply to 
the Prior's complaint, which strikes us as rather 
bold, considering the relative position of the parties. 
" O se forse nol trovero, io vi porro quello di questo 
padre Priore che ora me si molesta, che maraviglio- 
samente gli se confara" ("Or if, perchance, I do 
not find it (the face of Judas), I will put in that of 
the Father Prior who is tormenting me ; it will suit 
wonderfully well !"*) The engravings of this pic- 

* The painter may inflict a severer punishment by putting on a 
head than the executioner by taking one off. Who can ever forget 



MILAN. 37 

ture give you a better idea of most of the heads 
than the original now does, and of the movement of 
the disciples when that declaration struck on their 
hearts : " Behold, the hand of him that betray- 
eth me is with me on the table !" but no copy that 
I have seen has approached this face of Jesus, so 
holy, calm, and beautiful ; it is " God manifest in 
the flesh ;" you are ready to exclaim with Peter, 
"though I die with thee, yet will I never betray 
thee !" And yet it is said the painter left it unfinished, 
alleging that he could never express his conceptions 
of the character of Jesus ! 



By w y ay of a divertimento nazionale, we have just 
had two men in our drawing-room exhibiting a cru- 
cifix which their grandfather cut out of wood fifty 
years ago ; he must have been, I fancy, fifty years 
cutting it. There are 2000 figures on it, and an 
infinity of ornamental details illustrating the history 
of Christ. " You don't believe a word of that story 
of the crucifixion !" said Francois aside to me. 
This is an unbelieving Catholic's notion of a Prot- 
estant's faith. When the men, to exalt our ideas of 
the privilege we were enjoying, said we were the 
first to whom the thing had been shown, Francois 
whispered, " They have been showing it these five 
years ; the Italians are all liars !" Belief or unbe- 
lief in God and man go together. 

the "man of sin" (Pope Urban VIII.) whom Guido's Archangel Mi- 
chael is transfixing with his spear ? 

Vol. H— D 



38 MILAN. 

Madame S. has been to see us. She is a fra- 
gile-looking little creature, and, though now a grand- 
mother, as shy as a timid girl of thirteen. There 
is a tender solemnity in her voice and manner 
that constantly reminded me of Spielberg and of 
C — a, though she spoke little of him, and when 
she did, turned away her face to hide an emotion 
perceptible enough in the pressure of her delicate 
little hand, which is not very much bigger or stronger 
than a canary's claw. I wish those who confound 
all Italian women in one condemnation could know 
as we know the character of this good wife, devoted 
mother, and martyr-sister. 



We went last evening, escorted by J. C — a, to 
La Scala. It is built, as are the other nine theatres 
of Milan, on the ruins of a church. 

Gens d'armes, tall, muscular young men, were sta- 
tioned at the entrance of the house, at the foot of the 
stairs, on the landing-places, and in the lobbies, look- 
ing, with their swords and high furred caps, rather 
frightful to us, who have a sort of hydrophobic dread 
of an Austrian police. J. C — a took us up four flights 
of stairs, to " l'ordre cinquieme," that we might have 
a coup d'oeil of the whole theatre. This fifth row 
bears no resemblance to our galleries or to those 
of the English theatres. The box we entered was 
one of several called "loges de societe." They 
are fitted up as saloons for clubs of gentlemen, with 



MILAN. 39 

carpets, tables, and sofas, and are well lighted. The 
effect of the theatre from this height is, or would be, 
magnificent when they have an " illuminazione a 
giorni" (a daylight illumination). Ordinarily the 
blaze of light is reserved for the stage ; the audi- 
ence is in comparative obscurity, and, consequently, 
though La Scala is perhaps twice as large as the 
opera-house in London, its effect is by no means so 
brilliant as that where the light is diffused and re- 
flected by richly-dressed people. Here we could 
only imperfectly discern, now a matron's cap, and 
then a young lady's coeffure, as they peeped from 
behind the silk curtains of their boxes. The six 
rows of boxes are curtained with light silk border- 
ed with crimson. The front box is the emperor's. 
It occupies both the second and third rows, and is 
as large as a small drawing-room, and is, of course, 
royally fitted up with damask hangings, and has a 
gilded crown suspended over it. The theatre is 
the great rendezvous of Milanese society. The la- 
dies receive in their boxes instead of at home, and, 
being constructed with reference to this custom, they 
are deep and narrow. Not more than two persons 
can occupy a front seat. Between the seats in the 
pit and the front boxes there is a wide space left 
for the gentlemen to promenade. 

The music is a secondary object, holding the same 
place it does in a drawing-room. A favourite air 
or a favourite performer arrests attention for a few 
moments, but, as far as I have observed, even the 
musical Italian is not exempt from the common in- 



40 MILAN. 

firmity of preferring the sound of his own voice 
to another's, though his be not attuned to heavenly 
harmony. 

There was the abashing effrontery in staring which, 
■when occurring in the street, I have imputed to it be- 
ing rather a phenomenon to see young ladies walk- 
ing about as our girls do. But the gaze of men 
lounging before our box, and sometimes planting 
their eyeglasses and reconnoitring for the space of 
two or three minutes, compared with the respect w T ith 
which our women at home are treated, indicates 
rather strongly their relative position in the tw r o 
countries. 

After having heard Grisi, Persiana, Rubini, La 
Blache, &c, the singing here was no great affair. 
The Italians can no longer afford to pay their best 
singers. The presence of art and the result of study 
are striking in the stage-management. The opera, 
with all its accessories, is the study of this nation, 
as " financial systems" are the study of England and 
the United States. 

During the ballet, which, by-the-way, is interject- 
ed between the acts of the opera, much to the dis- 
turbance of its effect, there was a corps of between 
forty and fifty dancing-girls on the stage at the 
same moment, not perceptibly varying in height. 
These children are trained for the ballet at a school 
supported by the government — for the ballet, and 
for what besides ? This should be a fearful question 
to those who must answer it. It would, I should 
hope, cure our people's mad enthusiasm for opera- 



MILAN. 41 

dancers to witness the exhibition of these poor 
young things. I felt sorry for our dear girls, and 
mortified for myself, that we were present at such ob- 
scenity. I cannot call it by a more compromising 
name. 

There were 500 persons on the stage at one time, 
among them 200 soldiers belonging to the Austrian 
army. The emperor pays a large sum annually to 
support the opera at La Scala, considering it an ef- 
ficient instrument for tranquillizing the political pulse 
of Italy. No wonder that sirens must be employed 
to sing lullabies to those who have a master's canon 
pointed at their homes. Among other proofs which 
the emperor has that the love of freedom (that Di- 
vine and inextinguishable essence) is at work in the 
hearts of the Milanese, is the fact that no Italian 
lady receives an Austrian officer in her box with im- 
punity. It matters not what rank he holds ; if she 
receives him she is put into Coventry by her coun- 
trymen. Is there not hope of a people who, while 
their chains are clanking, dare thus openly to dis- 
dain their masters 1* 

* It is true, we see no rational prospect of freedom for Italy. 
Overshadowed as it is by Austrian despotism, and overpowered by 
the presence of her immense military force, and, what is still worse, 
broken into small and hostile states without one federative principle 
or feeling. But we cannot despair of a people who, like the Milanese, 
show that they have inherited the spirit of their fathers ; a spirit so 
heroically expressed in the twelfth century, when Frederic had sep- 
arated their allies from them, ravaged their territory, exhausted their 
treasure, and killed off their bravest soldiers. " We are feeble, for- 
saken, and crushed," they said ; " be it so : it does not belong to us to 
vanquish fortune, but to our country we devote our remaining pos- 
sessions, the strength still left in our arms, and the blood yet boiling 

D2 



42 MILAN. 

The two counts, the brothers C — i, have just been 
to see us, and expressed their eagerness to honour 
Confalonieri's letter. The elder C. is Podesta of the 
city, an office that has fallen from its original poten- 
tiality to a mere mayoralty ; but still, as its gift is a 
proof of Austrian favour, its incumbent will proba- 
bly be discreetly shy of the friends of the exiles. 
But, apart from this policy, we have little reason to 
expect hospitality. The Italians have no fellowship 
with the English, and into that category we fall. 
The habits and modes of society in the two countries 
are so different that there can be but little pleasure 
in their social intercourse. The English gentleman 
in England invites his Italian acquaintance to his 
home ; he comes here, and is offered the entree of the 
Italian's loge. He is offended and cold, and there 
their intercourse ends. After the gentlemen left us, 
R. asked K., who had been talking with C — i, " how 
she liked him." " Very much : he is not only aware 
that rice does not grow in New-England, and that 
the Ohio does not empty into the Atlantic, but he 
seems as familiar with the topography of our coun- 
try as if he had lived there." The count is a man 
of the world, and understands the most delicate 
mode of flattery. 

in our veins. They were given to us to resist despotism, and, before 
submitting, we will wait, not till the hope of conquering is lost — that 
it has long been — but till no means of resistance remain !" — Histmrt 
des Republiques Italiennes. 

Is there a nobler declaration of a love of freedom on record than 
this? 



MILAN. 43 

Nov. 4. — This is the greatest of all Milan's fete- 
davs— the fete of San Carlo Borromeo. The cere- 
monies were in the Duomo, and the Podesta obtain- 
ed us places in a " correto," one of the little galler- 
ies sometimes used, I believe, for the display of rel- 
ics : and, to crown all, we had the advantage of 
Count C.'s escort. 

The Duomo, which, you know, is the great Ca- 
thedral of Milan, and esteemed the second church 
in Italy, strikes a Protestant stranger at this time as 
a temple consecrated to St. Charles as its divinity. 
Illustrations of his life, for the most part indifferent- 
ly painted, are hanging between its hundred and 
sixty marble columns. Directly under the dome, in 
the crypt, there is a chape], where the saint's mortal 
remains, decorated with rich jewels, are preserved 
in a crystal sarcophagus overlaid with silver, with- 
out (as I am told) having undergone any very fright- 
ful change. I did not look within. I do not like 
to see the image of God mummied. The altar of 
this little chapel, in which silver lamps are always 
burning, is of solid silver. The walls are hung 
with tapestry of crimson and gold, woven in Milan, 
which cost thirteen pound sterling the braccio (less 
than three quarters of a yard). Eight bas-reliefs in 
pure silver, depicting the most striking events in the 
saint's life, cover panels of the wall ; and at each 
angle is a statue of pure silver. One of the bas- 
reliefs represents the saint distributing to the poor 
twenty thousand pounds, the avails of an estate 



44 MIL A N. 

which he sold to relieve them in a time of extra- 
ordinary distress. Query, how would he approve 
the wealth in mort-main in his chapel 1 I have 
been thus particular, my dear C, to show you how 
the generous gratitude of the pious has been wast- 
ed and perverted by priestly ignorance and su- 
perstition. This chapel is no just memorial of St 
Charles. His records are scattered over the Milan- 
ese territory, in wise and merciful institutions; so 
you may turn your denunciation of Catholic abuses 
into the wholesome channel of veneration for Chris- 
tian virtues in Catholic form. St. Charles deserves 
everything short of the Divine honours rendered to 
him. He was 'made archbishop and cardinal in his 
twenty-third year. He lived with the simplicity of 
Fenelon, subsisting on vegetables, sleeping on a 
straw-bed, and dispensing in private with the at- 
tendance of servants. He visited the obscurest vil- 
lages of his diocese, and penetrated even into the re- 
cesses of the Alps. He reformed the monastic estab- 
lishments and instituted parochial schools. He was 
the originator of Sunday -schools. We saw a large 
collection of boys and girls in the Duomo, taught 
by priests and laymen, and learned this school was 
instituted by St. Charles. We saw the peasants flock- 
ing to their parish church on Sunday, and were told 
they were going to the instruction provided by St. 
Charles ! He founded schools, colleges, hospitals, 
and a lazaretto. In every town in which he resided 
he left a memorial of his enlightened generosity, a 
college, an hospital, or a fountain. There are ten 



MILAN. 45 

hospitals and five colleges of his founding, and 
fountains without number. He poured out gifts of 
gold like water, and, better than this, he submitted 
his expenditure to a rigid scrutiny. After hearing 
all this, you would not stint the homage rendered to 
him, though you might wish to modify its form. 

I must confess that, to a Protestant Puritan, dis- 
daining forms and symbols, and disabused of the 
mysteries of the Church, the ceremonies appear 
like a theatrical pageant. On the high altar there 
were statues in massive silver of St. Charles and of 
St. Ambrose, the patron-saint of Milan, and, filling 
the interval between them, busts with mitred heads, 
also of silver. The treasure of the church was 
arranged against a crimson hanging, much as dishes 
are arranged on a dresser. On one side sat the 
archbishop on a throne with a golden mitre, and in 
magnificent robes. 

Within the choir opposite to us sat the civic rep- 
resentatives of the city, the Podesta at their head, 
before a table covered with a rich cloth, on which 
were emblazoned the armorial bearings of Milan in 
her happier — her free days ! The choir was filled 
with bishops, priests, and canons. Directly beneath 
us stood, with fixed bayonets and helmet-like caps, 
a line of gardes defeu. The nave was nearly filled 
with people of all conditions ; and what a multitude 
there might be without a crowd, you may imagine 
from the Cathedral being 449 Paris feet in length 
and 275 in breadth. 

If it were possible for me to describe the ceremo- 



46 MILAN. 

nies, it would be most tiresome to you. There was 
chanting and music, good and bad, as lively as a 
merry dance and as solemn as a dirge. There was 
a consecration of the host and burning of incense, 
and a kneeling of the vast multitude. There was 
much mummery of the priests. The archbishop was 
disrobed ; and, as he laid aside each consecrated ar- 
ticle of his apparel, he kissed it. A kneeling priest 
presented him a golden ewer, and he washed his 
hands. There was a procession of priests, and hom- 
age rendered by the civic representatives, and a be- 
stowal of peace by the archbishop, transmitted by 
the priests in a manner which the girls likened to 
the elegant diversion of our childhood, " Hold fast 
what I give you." The whole concluded with a 
discourse on the merits of St. Charles, in the midst 
of which we came away with the feeling that we 
had been witnessing a sort of melo-drama. But 
I rather think this feeling was quite as far from 
Christian as the ceremonies we contemned. Time 
and use have consecrated them to the pious Cath- 
olic. To him, each observation of this to us empty 
and inexpressive show imbodies some pious thought 
or holy memory. And, encumbered as the Catholic 
faith is, and perverted as it assuredly is from the 
original simplicity of the Gospel, it has, we know, 
its living saints, and many a worshipper, I trust, 
who, in spite of all these clouds and darkness, 
worships in spirit and in truth. 



MILAN. 47 

Count C — i came again to-day to lionize us, and 
we went forth in spite of the rain, for we have not 
time to wait till the waters " abate from the face of 
the earth." Will you not like, my dear C, to hear 
something of the charitable institutions of Milan, 
and to know that this work of Christian love is well 
done here 1 

We drove first to the institution for female or- 
phans. This was founded in the fifteenth century 
by one of the Borromeo family, a cousin of St. 
Charles. The building is spacious, built, as I be- 
lieve all the large habitations are here, around a 
court, and with broad porticoes on the four sides, 
where the girls can have plenty of free exercise 
when the bad weather keeps them from their gar- 
den. Their garden is even now, on the heels of 
winter, beautiful ; the grapes still in leaf, roses in 
bloom, and the foliage not more faded than ours is 
towards the last of September. The establishment 
is well endowed. The girls are received from the 
age of seven to ten, and retained till they are eigh- 
teen. They are instructed in reading, writing, ci- 
phering, composition, and in female handicraft. 
They excel in embroidery. We saw most delicate 
work in progress for royal trousseaux. When the 
girls leave the institution, if they are not so fortunate 
as to get husbands at once — not a rare occurrence, 
the matron told us — they are placed as domestics 
or in shops. We saw them in their long work-room, 
with the picture of the Virgin Mary at one end of it 



48 MILAN. 

(that holiest image of love to a Catholic eye), ranged 
on each side of the table, with their work-baskets, 
cushions, and the implements of their art in the 
neatest order; some were making garments, the most 
accomplished embroidering, and the youngest at 
plain sewing or knitting. There is a little pulpit 
half way up the room, from which one of the girls 
reads prayers daily, and occasionally a book of de- 
votion. Secular books are not permitted. 

The dormitories are spacious apartments, lofty and 
well ventilated, and as tidily arranged as our neigh- 
bours the Shaking Quakers', and with rather more to 
feed the imagination. Beside each single bed, spread 
with a pure white Marseilles cover, there hangs the 
picture of a saint, sometimes a crucifix, and always 
a rosary ; and about the walls are pictures of those 
good old men and pious women that constitute the 
world of the pious Catholic ; and for each com- 
pagnia (or class) there is an altar, with all proper 
appurtenances thereunto belonging, where prayers 
are said night and morning. 

We went into the chapel, the kitchen, and the 
distilling-room, where several girls were busily em- 
ployed ; and finally into the dining-room, just as 
the bell was ringing for dinner. The girls came 
trooping in in orderly files — beautiful girls they were 
— and each, as she passed, saluted us with a grace- 
ful bow and a sweet smile. I wish teaching could 
give such manners, and our stiff-jointed girls could 
be taught them ! The table was neatly spread, with 
a napkin at each plate. The soup was excellent, 



MILAN. 49 

as I proved by taking a spoon from one of the lit- 
tle things and tasting it, at which she looked up 
so pleased that you would certainly have kissed the 
blooming round cheek she willingly turned to me — 
and so did I. Besides the soup there was a small 
portion of meat, potatoes, excellent bread, and white 
and red mine. Their supper consists of bread, sal- 
ad, and fruit. On the whole, I came to the conclu- 
sion that the orphan's Providence in Milan is better 
than father and mother. 

Our conductress, who looked very like a respect- 
able New-England countrywoman, gave me a bou- 
quet at parting ; and, as we got into the carriage, our 
most elegant of cavaliers took off his hat and bow- 
ed to her with as deferential a courtesy as if she 
had been a royal princess. 

Our next visit was to an infant-school of one hun- 
dred and fifty children, under six years of age, of 
which Count C — i is director. This is one of seven 
infant-schools in Milan, all supported by private 
charities. The children, boys and girls, were dress- 
ed alike in blouses of a stout cotton plaid. They 
were eating a good soup when we entered, all ex- 
cept one little transgressor, who stood in a corner of 
the room, condemned to expiate some sin in this 
purgatory. He attracted C.'s compassion, and his 
superb figure bending over him was a picture. The 
little penitent was, of course, soon transferred to a 
hungry boy's paradise — the dinner-table After 
chanting an after-dinner grace, they tramped into 
an adjoining room, where they went through a drill 

Vol. IL— E 



50 M ILAN. 

for our edification, showing themselves as well in- 
structed as the young savans of similar institutions 
in our New-England Athens. 

They finished with a catechism somewhat differ- 
ing from ours. " Where is Paradise V y asked their 
teacher. " In the invisible heaven." " Why invis- 
ible ?" To which, while I was expecting in re- 
sponse some metaphysical enigma, the boy replied, 
" Perche se vede nb" (" Because it is not seen"). 
"What did you become by baptism V asked the 
teacher. " A Christian." " Are you all Christians V 9 
They replied, in chorus, "Noi siamo tutti Cristiani, 
per la grazia di Dio !" (" We are all Christians by 
the grace of God"). Poor little fellows! May 
they learn by experience what the glorious posses- 
sion is, signified by the name which alone the rite of 
baptism can give. 



We awoke this morning to a bright day, the first 
unclouded one we have had for vjeeks — and this is 
" bella Italia !" The girls were enchanted, as girls 
may be, with sallying forth in their new bonnets and 
fair-weather dresses. C.'s carriage was at our hotel 
at an early hour (for this was to be a busy day), and 
off we drove to the hospital, an institution founded 
in 1456 by Francesco Sforza, fourth Duke of Milan. 
He gave his palace, a curious antique it is, now, how- 
ever, forming but a small portion of the pile of build- 
ings. Successive donations have enriched the institu- 
tion, till its income amounts to two hundred and fifty 



MILAN. 51 

thousand dollars. There is provision for two thou- 
sand two hundred and forty persons, and during the 
past summer the hospital has been full. 

Supported by this foundation, but without the 
town, there is an insane hospital, a lying-in hospital, 
and a foundling hospital, where there are now nine 
thousand children ! And, besides this, charities are 
distributed to individuals throughout the Milanese 
territory, in cases where it is considered inexpedient 
to remove them to the hospital. 

There is a fine bathing establishment. Some 
baths are appropriated exclusively to patients af- 
flicted with a fever peculiar to Lombardy, resem- 
bling leprosy, for which the warm bath is the 
only known remedy. There are plenty of diseases, 
I fancy, prevailing among the poor in Italy, for 
which the warm bath and plenty of soap would be 
a cure. 

After going through the repositories for clothes, 
the galleries and courts for exercise, the laboratory, 
the kitchen (where immense quantities of wholesome 
food were in preparation), I said to C — i, " The 
peasants must be very glad to have a good reason 
for coming here." " On the contrary," he said, 
" they are unwilling to leave their homes, and never 
come till forced by misery." Truly He who " set 
the solitary in families" knew the elements of the 
affections He had given and for which He was pro- 
viding. 

We passed through some of the apartments where 
were great congregations of the sick, each surround- 



52 MILAN. 

ed with suffering, and yet in what was to him com- 
plete solitude. No wonder man everywhere clings 
to the wretchedest home where he can feel a moth- 
er's hand, meet the eye of a wife or sister, hear the 
voices of his children, and see some mute objects 
that touch the springs of memory and hope ! 

I suppose this is much like other hospitals. I 
never was in one before, and the scene haunts me 
— those haggard faces of vacancy, or of weakness 
and misery. A few were reading religious books, 
one man was confessing to his priest, and a conva- 
lescent was receiving instruction from a layman, one 
of a society of men and women who devote them- 
selves to the ignorant poor. A screen was drawn 
around one bed, to hide the unconscious tenant from 
whom the world was forever hidden. 

In the " Archivia" we were shown Sforza's origi- 
nal deed of gift, with his autograph ; and, what 
pleased me much more, a deed of gift from my fa- 
vourite St. Charles, with his autograph. This slight 
record of our superficial observation of the charita- 
ble institutions of Milan will convince you that 
Italy is not merely the mass of vice, beggary, and 
impotence it is so often represented, but that there 
are yet left more than the ten righteous to save the 
cities. 



On leaving the hospital a change came " o'er the 
spirit of our dream." C — i said the day was made 
to see the view from the spire of the Duomo ; so we 



MILAN. 53 

went there, and wound up the almost interminable 
but convenient staircase to the lower roof. 

This Cathedral is of white marble, that is, original- 
ly white ; but as it was begun in the fourteenth cen- 
tury, a great part is discoloured, nearly blackened. 
It, however, contrasts w T ell with the glittering white- 
ness of that portion finished in the time of Napoleon. 
It is a history in stone, going far back into the dim 
ages. I am always on the verge of a description of 
these bewitching cathedrals, in spite of my resolution 
against it. But I can give none, and therefore mere- 
ly tell you that the edifice is supported by fifty-two 
marble columns ; that three of its sides are covered 
with bas-reliefs, with single figures and groups of 
figures ; that there are more than 3000 statues on it ; 
that there are 100 spires running up into points call- 
ed needles, each surmounted with a statue, and in 
the centre, and rising above all, a marble gilt statue 
of the Virgin crowned Queen of Heaven. You 
have no conception of the prodigality of its adorn- 
ments till you are on the roof, and pass from marble 
terrace to terrace, up one flight of marble stairs and 
another, and another, and through labyrinths of gal- 
leries, and groups of statues of old monks, pilgrims, 
saints, cherubs, and children; every angle, every 
little niche filled with them ; and see, far above you, 
those hundred figures on their airy pinnacles, look- 
ing as if they w T ere native to the element they are in, 
and might move upon it. You may, perhaps, have 
some idea of the extent of this intricate maze of art 
and beauty when I tell you that persons have wan- 

E2 



54 MILAN. 

dered about here for hours, lost, and unable to find a 
clew to the place where they entered. 

If Gibbon, who was not addicted to pious reflec- 
tions, exclaimed after his elaborate description of St. 
Sophia, " How dull is the artifice, how small the la- 
bour, compared with the formation of the vilest in- 
sect that creeps upon the surface of the temple !" 
what, think you, must have been our sensations 
when, having passed every obstruction to our sight, 
we raised our eyes from this gorgeous edifice to a 
temple not built with man's hands — to God's most 
beautiful work on earth, to the Alps, bounding one 
third of a horizon of magnificent extent, every point 
defined, every outline marked on the clear atmo- 
sphere — to Monte Rosa, sitting a Queen of Beauty 
on her high throne, shining like the angel in the 
Apocalypse, whom the rapt apostle saw standing in 
the sun. We were in danger of forgetting our hu- 
manity, but our sight was overpowered, our field of 
vision contracted to the rich plains of Lombardy, 
then to the city under us, to the piazza del duomo, 
and to those detestable loaded and primed Austrian 
canon, and we became quite conscious that this was 
not the best of all possible worlds ! 

After winding up the staircase within the central 
and loftiest spire, we reached a point from which our 
first resting-place seemed hardly removed from the 
ground. We came down to the marble wilderness 
again, and wandered for an hour over it. Once C — i 
paused, and, placing his hand on a balustrade, said, 
"Do you like tragedies?" Young people always 



MILAN. 55 

do, and ours looking like the eager listeners they 
were, he proceeded : " Two years ago there was a 
Milanese passionately attached to a young married 
woman of our city, whose husband became jealous, 
and fearful to the lovers. In their mad passion and 
despair they agreed to meet here and throw them- 
selves off. Both were true to the appointment, but 
when the woman saw before her the terrible death 
to which she had consented, her nerves were not 
strong enough, and she tried to escape from her 
lover. His resolve, however, was unshaken ; for an 
hour he pursued, she flying through these galleries, 
over the terraces, running up these long staircases and 
gliding down, now hiding, now darting out again ; 
but finally he caught her, dragged her here, and, while 
she was shrieking, clasped her in his arms and leap- 
ed from this balustrade — look down, and you may 
imagine the horrors of the death." We looked down 
at the jutting points that interrupted the descent to the 
pavement, and all turned away silent and shuddering. 



We found Madame T. at our hotel, full of cor- 
diality, animation, and kindness. She had come in 
from her villa at Desio to keep her appointment 
with us. She first took us to her town-house, which 
has recently undergone a remodelling and refurnish- 
ing, and a most luxurious establishment it is. The per- 
fection of Parisian taste, the masterly workmanship 
of England, and the beautiful art of her own country, 
have all been made subservient to wealth almost un- 



56 MIL A N. 

limited. It seemed to me like the realization of an 
Arabian tale. I have seen luxurious furniture else- 
where, but nothing, not even at Windsor Castle, so 
beautiful as Madame TVs painted ceilings, her mo- 
saic floors, and a window painted by Palaggio, in 
the exquisite colours which modern art has revived, 
illustrating Ivanhoe. How Scott has chained the 
arts to his triumphal car ! There was a screen, too, 
exquisitely painted by the same artist. We went 
through the whole suite of apartments, dining-room, 
coffee-room, drawing-room, music-room, billiard- 
room, &c, Madame T. pointing out the details to us 
with the undisguised naive pleasure of a child. " Je 
vous assure," she said, -" que lorsqu'il y a les rideaux 
en velours et satin blanc avec les derriere-rideaux 
en tulle brode, c'a fait un bel effet."* An English 
or American woman would have affected some little 
reserve ; the frankness of the Italian lady was bet- 
ter. When we expressed our admiration, Madame 
T. said, " This is all very well, but you must see 
the Countess S.'s house. It is far superior to mine."f 

* "I assure you, that when the curtains of velvet and white satin, 
with the under-curtains of embroidered Tulle, are up, the effect is 
beautiful." 

f We were afterward shown the Countess S.'s apartments. The 
furniture was most luxurious, and there were beautiful sculpture 
and painting, but the house was not in as good taste as Madame 
T.'s, nor more magnificent. I was attracted by a striking, fierce- 
looking portrait, and asked an Italian gentleman with us if that was 
the countess's husband. " Oh, no," he replied; " she has not lived 
with her husband for some years. This is the picture of an opera- 
singer, a favourite of the countess ; she has no children, I believe," 
he added, appealing to our cicerone. "I beg your pardon," replied 
the man, coolly, " she has one, not quite a year old." I afterward 
learned this woman had a notoriety that rivalled Catharine's of Rus- 



MILAN. 57 

Madame T. accompanied us to the studii of Hayez 
and Palaggio, the two most celebrated painters of 
Northern Italy. An Italian studio is always inter- 
esting, enriched as it is with the models, drawings, 
&c, &c, that are the studies of the artist. Palaggio 
is an architect and antiquarian as well as painter, 
and spends whatever he acquires (which is no trifle) 
upon some treasure or curiosity of art, so that his 
rooms looked more like a museum than a studio. I 
might bore you with a description of some things 
that we saw here, but that my mind was too preoc- 
cupied to observe Palaggio's paintings, or even to 
heed his friend Madame TVs enthusiastic praises of 
them. In coming here, she had pointed out to us 
Confalonieri's house, the suite of apartments occu- 
pied by his angelic countess, and the cupola through 
which he attempted to escape when he was seized 
by the Austrian police. All this produced too vivid 
an impression of our friend's sufferings to allow any 
pleasant sensations immediately to succeed it. You 
will be glad to hear that Count C — i has been the 
faithful steward of Confalonieri, as Madame T. ex- 
pressed it, " La vraie Providence." R. and the girls 
passed the evening in the Podesta's loge at the 
opera. 

sia ; and yet that, whenever these superb rooms were thrown open, 
they were filled with the noblest society in Milan. " Mais que vou- 
lez vous ?" said a Milanese gentleman to a young English lady who 
had declined the countess's invitation; "elle est une femme char- 
mante— parfaitement bien 6levee !" Backwoods barbarisms are bet- 
ter than this ! 



58 MILAN. 

This morning we set off on an excursion planned 
for us by our kind friends, and came first, attended 
by G — a, to Monza, some eight or nine miles from 
Milan. This city, you know, is often named in the 
history of the Italian Republics. It has now an im- 
perial palace, where the viceroy occasionally lives, 
where he has a noble park, which, however, does 
not suffice for his royal hunts, and so there are addi- 
tions to it ; pairings cut off from the grounds of the 
neighbouring gentlemen called " cacia riservata" 
which they must by no means intrude on. What 
thorns must these encroachments be to the impatient 
spirit of the Italians ! 

We went over the grounds ; they are richly va- 
ried with artificial water, waterfalls, a grotto, &c. 
But the chief object of attraction at Monza is the 
famed iron crown of Lombardy. I felt, I confess, a 
keen desire to see it ; for whatever doubts the skep- 
tic may throw over the transmission of the veritable 
nails of the cross from St. Helena to Queen Theo- 
linda, which form the circlet of the iron crown, it 
was, beyond a doubt, once placed on the brow of 
Charlemagne and of Napoleon.* It is kept in the 

* Lady Morgan concludes a most minute description of the pomp 
that attended the conveying the iron crown from Monza to Milan for 
Napoleon's coronation thus : " Last came a carriage with the master 
of ceremonies, bearing the crown on a velvet cushion. Twenty- five 
of Bonaparte's old guard surrounded the honoured vehicle. The 
crown was received in Milan with a salvo of artillery and the ringing 
of bells, and at the portal of the Cathedral by the Cardinal-archbish- 
op of Milan, who bore it through the church and deposited it on the 
altar. The guards watched round it during the night." 



MILAN. 59 

Cathedral of Monza, a rare old edifice with much 
barbaric ornament, and containing among its treas- 
ure some curious relics of Theolinda, the favourite 
Queen of Lombardy. We scarcely " improved the 
privilege" of seeing these things, and looked only at 
a ponderous fan with which her majesty must rather 
have heated than cooled herself; at a very indifferent 
dressing-comb with a richly -jewelled handle, and at 
the sapphire cup, wrought from a single stone, in 
which her majesty pledged her second husband ! 

It was evident that our friends had made great 
efforts to obtain for us a sight of the real crown, and 
that very solemn observances were necessary to 
showing it, which I fear we were quite incapable of 
appreciating. Several priests entered and put on 
their sacred robes. One knelt, while others placed 
a ladder against the wall to ascend to the shrine 
where, above the high altar, this crown is kept en- 
closed. Three locks were turned with golden keys. 
The kneeling priest flourished his silver censer ; 
sending up a cloud of incense, and half veiled by it, a 
huge cross, resplendent with jewels, was brought 
down, and the sacred crown forming its centre 
was revealed to our profane eyes. The nails are 
made into a ring of iron, enclosed by a circlet of 
pure gold studded with priceless jewels. In the 
arms of the cross, which is of wood covered with 
gold, are set, at short spaces apart, small glass 
cases containing precious relics, the sponge and 
reed of the crucifixion, bits of the true cross, &c. 
The cross was restored to its position with a repeti- 
tion of the ceremonies, the prayers, and the incense ; 



60 MILAN. 

and, finally, the principal official took off his robes 
one by one, and kissed each as he reverently folded 
it. I was glad when it was all over ; for these reli- 
gious ceremonies, where I am forever vibrating be- 
tween the humility of conscious ignorance and the 
pride of a superior liberty, are always painful to me. 
That grand old barbaric monarch, Frederic Bar- 
barossa, by turns the scourge and victim of the 
church, lies here. We were obliged to pass with- 
out examination his sarcophagus and monument, 
and the curious frescoes of this Cathedral, for we 
wanted time on our way to Desio to stop at the 
monument to the Countess Confalonieri. She is 
buried in the grounds of her brother, our friend 
Count C. C — i. The spot is enclosed, and a mar- 
ble monument is over it, with the following beauti- 
ful inscription written by Manzoni : 

" Teresa, nata da Gaspare Casati, e da Maria Origoni il XVIII. 
Settembre, MDCCLXXXVII., maritata a Frederico Confalonieri il 
XIV. Ottobre, MDCCCVI. Orno modestamente la prospera sorte 
di lui, l'afflitta soccorse con l'opera, e partecipo con l'animo, quanto 
ad opera e ad animo umano e conceduto. Consunta, ma non vinta 
dal cordoglio, mori, sperando nel signore dei desolati, il XXVI. Set- 
tembre, MDCCCXXX. 

" Gabrio, Angelo, Camillo Casati alia sorella amantissima ed ama- 
tissima, eressero ed a se preparano questo monumente, per riposare 
tutti un giorno accanto alle ossa care e venerate. Vale intanto, an- 
ima forte e soave ! Noi, porgendo tuttavia preci, ed offerendo sa- 
grificii, per te, confidiamo che, accolta nell' eterna luce, discerni ora 
i misteri di misericordia nascosti quaggui nei rigori di Dio."* 



* " Teresa, born of Gaspari Casati and of Maria Orgoni on the 
18th of September, 1787, was married to Frederic Confalonieri on the 
14th of October, 1806. She adorned his prosperity, and, in as far as 
sympathy and benefaction are permitted to a human being, her soul 
shared his adversity, and her deeds softened it. Consumed, but not 



MILAN. 61 

The whole reading world is now familiar with the 
character of Theresa Confalonieri ; with the partic- 
ulars of the heroic conjugal devotion of this victim 
to Austrian despotism, and martyr to conjugal affec- 
tion. Let your children, for the sake of their char- 
ities, my dear C, remember that this character was 
formed in the bosom of the Catholic Church, and 
sustained in a country where they will be often told 
the women are all of a piece with the Countess S, 
That the organization of society here, as far aa 
women are concerned, is bad enough, I doubt not; 
but let us not believe that to be universal which 
is only general. 

Madame T.'s villa is near the little town of De- 
sio. After arriving at Desio we had an hour of 
rich twilight before dinner to see her grounds, 
which have given us new ideas of an Italian villa, 
and would lead us to think it is not so much a want 
of taste for rural life as a want of means to carry 
out their ideas of art and beauty, that drives the 
Italian gentry from their country-places. Madame 
T. lacks nothing to produce the results she wills. 
Her conservatories, extending many hundred feet on 
each side her mansion, indicate princely wealth. 

overcome by sorrow, she died on the 20th of September, 1830, trust- 
ing in the God of the desolate. 

" Gabrio, Angelo, and Camillo Casati have erected this monument 
to their most loving and beloved sister, and prepared it for them- 
selves, that they may one day repose beside her dear and venerated 
remains. Farewell, meanwhile, brave and gentle spirit ! We, con- 
tinually offering up prayers and sacrifices for thee, trust that thou, re- 
ceived into eternal life, canst now penetrate the mysteries of mercy 
which here below are hidden in the chastenings of God." 

Vol. II.— F 



62 MILAN* 

They are filled with exotic fruits and flowers ; one 
is filled with pines in great perfection and positive 
abundance — some five or six thousand well-grown 
plants of the camelia japonica intimate the magnif- 
icent scale of things here. 

On one side of the estate there is an old abbey 
which serves the purpose of stables and other offices, 
and which, last year, must have looked rather ruin- 
ous and Italianish ; this has been recently ingeniously 
masked under the direction of the artist Palaggio, and 
now appears to be fragments of an acqueduct and 
an old abbey church with a tower, from which you 
have a view over half the rich plains of Lombardy, 
of an amphitheatre of Alps, of Como in the dis- 
tance, and — I could fill my sheet with names that 
would make your heart beat if you had been here. 
Within the edifice there is a theatre and a salle 
d'armes, which is to be also a museum, and is al- 
ready well begun with a collection of antiques. 

There are noble avenues of old trees that might 
make an Englishman look up and around him. 
Through one of these we went to a pretty toy of 
a labyrinth, where one might get " a little lost." 
"We were soon extricated by our lady, who held the 
clew, and who led us around the winding, bosky 
margin of a lake so extensive that I did not dream 
nature had not set it there and filled its generous 
basin, till Madame T, told me it was fed by a stream 
of water brought from Lake Como ; and this stream 
flows through the grounds ; now leaping over a pre- 
cipice, and now dancing over a rocky channel, and 



« 



MILAN. 63 

singing on its way as if it chose its own pleasant 
path. There are many artificial elevations ; we pass- 
ed over one half as high as our Laurel Hill, with 
full-grown trees upon it ; and between this and an- 
other is a wild deli with a cascade, an aerial bridge, 
and tangled shrubbery : a cabinet picture of some 
passages in Switzerland ; and on my saying this, 
Madame T. replied, she called it her " Suisse." At 
one end of the lake, near a fisherman's hut, is a mon- 
ument to Tasso, half hidden with bays. There was 
a fishing-boat near the hut, and so I took it for a 
true story ; but, on Madam T. throwing open the 
door, we entered an apartment fitted up with mu- 
sical instruments, which she modestly called her 
sewing-room. How fit it is for that sedative em- 
ployment you may judge: there is a lovely statue 
in the middle of the room ; the walls and ceiling are 
covered with illustrations of Tasso in fresco, and 
from each window is a different and most enchanting 
view. 

" What a happy woman you must be 1" said I to 
our charming hostess, " to be the mistress of this 
most lovely place !" (a foolish remark enough, by- 
the-by) ; her face changed, her eyes filled with tears, 
and after alluding to repeated afflictions from the 
severance of domestic ties by death, and to the suf- 
ferings of her friends for their political opinions, she 
concluded, "you know something of the human 
heart — judge for me, can I be happy V Alas ! alas ! 
what contrasts are there between the exterior and 
interior of life ! 



64 MILAN. 

The deepening twilight drove us in, and Madame 
T., who, to the refinements of her elegant hospitality, 
adds the higher grace of frank, unceremonious kind- 
ness, conducted us herself to our apartments, where 
we truly were lost in six immense rooms, each as 
large as half an American house, and a pretty fair- 
sized one too. We drew as nearly together as we 
could, and made a settlement in these vast solitudes, 
which, I confess, look rather dreary, with our preju- 
dices in favour of carpets, snugness, comfort, and 
such un-Italian, unartistic ideas ! 

There was a family party at dinner. Madame 
T.'s nieces and grand-nieces are staying w r ith her. 
The children w r ere at table. " Our Italian custom," 
Madame T. says, and a wholesome one it is. The 
dinner was served in the fashion of Madame K.'s at 
Frankfort ; fruit, flowers, and sweetmeats only placed 
on the table, and, being but little more than a fam- 
ily dinner, would, I think, rather have startled those 
people who fancy Italians all live on maccaroni and 
eau sucre. The cookery was in the best French 
style. The French, I believe, give the law to the 
kitchens as well as the toilets of the civilized world. 
We had a delicacy much esteemed here — the Pied- 
montese truffle. It was served as a salad, is white, 
very good, and very costly. The gentleman w T ho 
sat on my right (the curate of the village, a person 
certainly not falling within the condemnation of 
the gourmand who says a man is a fool who does 
not love truffles) told me, in the intervals of swal- 
lowing at least half a pound of them, that they cost 



M I L A N. 65 

between seven and fourteen francs the ounce ! Be- 
sides all the fruits in season, and delicious home- 
grown pines, we had a fruit called nespuli, much 
liked here, which, to my taste, resembled the frozen 
and thawed apple I have picked up under our apple- 
trees in a sunny March day ; and, will you believe it, 
villanous as it was, it had a smack <?f home and 
childish and rustic things, that in this far land, in 
the midst of all these luxuries, brought tears to my 
eyes. There was another strange foreign fruit very 
pretty and passably good, resembling the seed-ves- 
sel of some flower, and called chichingie. The 
evening was filled up with Chinese billiards for the 
girls and common billiards for the gentlemen, and 
a diverting lesson in Milanese from the count to the 
girls, who are highly amused with the cracking 
sound of this spurious Italian. My evening was 
spent in talking with Madame T. and with the 
curate of the Catholic religion in America. He 
was much surprised at the idea of its gaining 
ground there, and much delighted too ; and he pro- 
posed to an octogenarian brother of Monsieur T. 
a pilgrimage to the Valley of the Mississippi, about 
which, I suspect, I gave him his most definite no- 
tion by telling him that no truffles grew there ! 

Madame T., who uses her privilege of sex in 
talking freely (and eloquently, too) on forbidden 
subjects, roused all our sympathies by her particu- 
lars of the petty and irritating annoyances to which 
the Austrian surveillance subjects them. 

F2 



66 MILAN. 

My dear C, it is worth the trouble of a pilgrim- 
age to the Old World to learn to feel — to realize our 
political blessings and our political exemptions. 
And what do those renegadoes deserve — I cannot call 
them by a gentler name — who, enjoying the order 
of despotism in travelling through Europe, come 
home and e^ol the Austrian government, and sigh 
for those countries where there is no danger that 
freedom may run into the madness of " Lynch-law V 9 
What is every tyrannical decree of absolutism but a 
Lynch-law 1 I have met an Englishman who was 
not ashamed to prefer the quiet of Austrian domin- 
ion to a government that involved the tumult of an 
English election! Would these people be cured, 
think ye, by a year's solitary reflection in the dun- 
geons of Spielberg 1 But " good-night ;" I am too 
tired for political or any other speculation — remem- 
ber, we began the day at Monza. 

* 

Milan, November 11. 
My DEAR C, 
We have returned from our three days' excursion, 
and as I hear the rain pattering on the pavement, 
and look up through our dingy window, it seems but 
a brilliant dream. We waked at Desio to such a 
morning as might have inspired Guido's conception 
of his Aurora, and, after a breakfast which our 
bountiful hostess enriched with every barbarism, 
English and American, she had ever heard of, in- 
cluding tea, whose odorous breath for the first time, 



MILAN. 67 

I fancy, incensed that old Italian mansion, we set off 
in two carriages for Como. I was much amused 
and somewhat instructed by questions which Ma- 
dame T. and the count put to me relative to Ameri- 
can courtships and marriages. The count had just 
come from the marriage of a niece who had seen 
her husband but once or twice, and never but in the 
presence of her family. Italian marriages in high 
life were all, he confessed, mere marriages of conve- 
nance, arranged by the parents; so that, as Byron 
has said, "marrying for the parents, they love for 
themselves." 

I asked if their young women were always passive 
under these contracts made by their guardians — no; 
the reluctance was sometimes too strong to be 
mastered, and it was not uncommon for them to 
draw back even at the altar. " But was it possible," 
he asked, " that our young people were allowed per- 
fectly unshackled intercourse after the engagement, 
without the eye of the mother or any guardian what- 
ever." And then, at my plain story of our modes 
of proceeding, there were such " Mon Dieus !" and 
" Dio Mios !" But, finally, they ended with an hon- 
est and hearty admiration of that system where free- 
dom and confidence ensured safety, and afforded the 
best chance and security for affection. Young 
unmarried women in Milan, C — i said, were as 
much secluded as in Turkey. " They go from their 
houses to the theatre, and in the summer to their vil- 
las. They are as incapable as children of taking 
care of themselves ; you might as well send the Du- 



68 MILAN. 

omo flying through the air, as five Italian ladies to 
travel !" " Do you know," he asked me, " how you 
would instantly be known in the streets of any Ital- 
ian city to be English V m " No." " Because you 
precede your young ladies j an Italian lady always 
keeps her protegees under her eye." Is not this a 
key to our relative position 1 

We came all too soon to Como, now a poor little 
town on the lake-side, with some vestiges of its for- 
mer magnificence in towers and walls, a rich old Ca- 
thedral, antique columns, &c. The approach to it 
is picturesque. The ruins of a fine old feudal cas- 
tle, standing on an almost inaccessible pinnacle, over- 
hang it ; but there is little left to remind you that it 
was once the rival of Milan. 

Madame T. had arranged our excursion, and 
here, to our great regret, she was obliged to leave 
us. But we are becoming philosophic; we turned 
from our vanishing pleasures to the lake basking 
in sunshine, to the picturesque little boats floating 
about on it, and to a certain most attractive one 
with a pretty centre-table and scarlet cushions, 
which our cavaliers were deftly arranging ; and in a 
few minutes more we were in it, and, rowed by four 
stout oarsmen, passed the gate-like entrance to the 
lake, guarded by statues, and fairly entered on our 
miniature voyage. The air (November 9th !) was 
as soft as in. one of our mellowest June evenings, and 

* Americans are for the most part merged in the English on the 
Continent. One of our party said to an Italian, " But we are not 
English." ■ " Ah— no ; but English Americans— all the same." 



LAKECOMO. 69 

the foliage had a summer freshness. We have seen 
and felt nothing before like this Oriental beauty, 
luxury, and warmth. The vines are fresh, myrtles, 
olive, and fig-trees are intermingled with them ; the 
narrow margin of the lake is studded with villas ; 
the high hills that rise precipitously over it are 
terraced; and summer-houses, statues, and tem- 
ples, all give it the appearance of festive ground, 
where Summer, Queen of Love and Beauty, holds 
perpetual revels. The Alps bound the horizon on 
the north. There "winter and rough weather" 
have their reign; and as I looked at their stern 
outline and unrelenting " eternal" snows, they ap- 
peared to me the fitting emblem of Austrian despo- 
tism brooding over this land of beauty ! 

We passed Queen Caroline's villa. These sur- 
roundings, you may remember, were the scene of some 
of the scandal that came out on her most scanda- 
lous trial ; and we passed a lovely residence of Pas- 
ta's, where this woman, who held the music-loving 
world in thraldom, is living in happy seclusion on 
" country contentments," an example of filial and 
maternal devotion. A beautiful villa belonging to 
Count Porro was pointed out to us ; and as I looked 
on its lovely position and rich adornments, I felt 
what these noble Italian exiles risked and lost in 
their holy cause — but not lost! Every self sacrifi- 
cing effort in this cause is written in the book of 
life! 

We saw the Pliniana, where the little rivulet 
Pliny described nearly 2000 years ago ebbs and 



?0 LAKE COMO. 

flows as it did then.* It gives one strange sensa- 
tions to see one unchanged thing where the world 
has undergone such mutations. 

For a while, my dear C, we felt as if we could 
spend our lives in floating over this lovely lake ; do 
not be shocked ; you at home can afford for once to 
be forgotten. But, by degrees, our mortality got 
uppermost, the " meal above the malt," our voices 
one by one died away ; our superb cavalier looked 
a little qualmish ; G.'s gentle current ebbed ; L. laid 
her head on the table and fell asleep, and by the 
time we arrived at Bellagio, twenty miles from Como, 
the shores were wrapped in a dusky veil, and we 
were very glad to exchange our boating-pleasure for 
a most comfortable inn. 



We went to bed at Bellagio, feeling that it would 
be little short of presumption to expect a third 
fine day, and heroically resolving to be " equal to 
either fortune," clouds or sunshine. I confess I crept 
to the window in the morning with dread ; but 
there I saw Venus at her morning watch over the 
lake, the sky a spotless blue, and the lake as still 
and lovely as a sleeping child. I was malicious 
enough to reply to K.'s drowsy interrogatory, " rain- 
ing again!" But the morning was too fine to be 

* Pliny stands in the light of a patron-saint of Como. He provided 
a fund for the support of freed children here. He instituted a pub 
lie school with an able teacher, contributed munificently to its sup 
port, and resigned a legacy in favour of the inhabitants. His stat 
ue, with an inscription, is still here. 



LAKE CO MO. 71 

belied. We were all soon assembled in a little ro- 
sary surrounding the inn ; for so you might call a 
court filled to the very water's edge with rose-bushes 
in full bud and flower. We met our cavaliers pro- 
faning the perfumed air with cigars, which, howev- 
er, they gallantly discarded, and attended us to the 
Villa Serbelloni, which covers a hill overhanging 
Bellagio. It is the property of a gentleman in the 
Austrian service who, serving (according to the uni- 
versal Austrian policy) far from his own country, 
leaves the delight of embellishing and enjoying it 
to a relative. This gentleman is now making a car- 
riage-road around the place, and up a steep acclivity, 
where, at no trifling expense of course, it is support- 
ed on arches of solid mason-work. The whole hill 
is converted into a highly-embellished garden filled 
with roses, laurestines, magnolias, bays, laurels, 
myrtles, and every species of flowering shrub grow- 
ing luxuriantly in the open air. The aloe, which 
will not bear our September frosts, grows unscathed 
here ; and, as a proof the invariable softness of the 
climate, C — i pointed out an olive-tree to me three 
or four hundred years old. This mildness is the re- 
sult of the formation of the shores of the lake, for 
within a few miles the winters are severe. 

We wandered up and down and around the cha- 
teau, coming out here and there on the most exqui- 
site views. Once our pleasures were diversified, 
not interrupted, by shrieks from L. I hastened for- 
ward and found her flying from a posse of cock- 
turkeys that her crimson shawl had enraged. C. 



72 LAKE COMO. 

was leaning on his cane and shouting with laughter 
at her girlish terror at these " betes feroces," and 
rather, as I thought, confederate with them. 

Serbelloni is on a promontory that divides the lake 
into two branches, and thence you have a view of 
both; of Tremezzina on one side and Ravenna on 
the other. And, dear C, it was in the morning light, 
with the rose-coloured hues on the Alps, and villa- 
ges, villas, and gardens, looking bright in the early 
day ; morn's " russet mantle" close drawn here, and 
there the lake laughing in the sunshine, and no 
sound but a waterfall on the opposite shore, or the 
chiming bells of a distant church. It was a scene 
of pure enchantment for us children of the cold, ster- 
ile North ! and you will comprehend its effect, and 
forgive R. into the bargain, if I tell you that, when I 
first met him on coming back into the " rosary," he 
exclaimed, his feeble frame thrilling with a sense of 
renovation and delicious beauty, " I will never go 
back to America — / cannot!" Nature is, indeed, 
here a tender restoring nurse ! 

After breakfast we left Bellagio (forever, alas !) 
and walked through an avenue of sycamores to the 
Villa Melzi. Melzi was president of the Cisalpine 
republic ; but when Napoleon made the republic a 
kingdom, and assumed its crown,, he made Melzi 
Duke of Lcdi. The place has now fallen into the 
hands of the duke's son, a lad of eighteen. The 
house fronts the lake. There is a look of nature 
about the grounds, and soft and quiet beauty ; but, as 
they lie nearly on the level of the lake, they are in- 



LAKE COMO. 73 

ferior in picturesque charm to Serbelloni. Art al- 
ways comes in in Italy to help Nature, to perfect 
her, or to make you forget her. We met Beatrice, 
and Dante, and other statues grouped and single, 
and on the conservatory were busts of Josephine 
and Madame Letitia among many others, expressing 
Melzi's homage to his master. There is a chapel at 
a short distance from the house, with a beautiful al- 
tar-piece sculptured, I think, by Marchesi ; and 
monuments to different members of the Melzi fam- 
ily, that either express some domestic story or are 
allegorical — I could not make out which. Of all 
things, I should like an ancestral chapel, with the 
good deeds of my progenitors told in painting and 
stone ! 

I will not make you follow me through the suite 
of apartments, beautiful as they are ; but, just to get 
a notion of the refinement of Italian taste, pause in 
the dining-room, where two little enchanting marble 
boys are standing on a side-table, the one with a 
sad, injured countenance holding an empty bird's- 
nest from which the other, a little imp of mischief 
and fun, has rifled the eggs.* 

There are six groups of children painted on dif- 
ferent compartments of the wall, all having some 
allusion to dinner viands. In one a little rascal is 
holding wide open the mouth of a fish as if to swal- 
low a younger boy who, to the infinite diversion of 
his merry comrades, is running away, scared out of 

* I afterward saw this trait of Nature as an antique bas-relief ; I 
think at the Doria Villa at Rome. 

Vol. II.— G 



74 LAKE CO Ma 






his wits. In the next, one boy is sustaining anotheT 
on his shoulders that he may steal the fruit from a 
basket on the head of a third ; and in the next a 
murderous little tribe are shooting their arrows at a 
dove tied to a tree — and so on to the end. 

There is a capital picture of Napoleon with an ex- 
pression of keen hopes, unaccomplished projects, 
and unrealized ambitions. 

From Melzi we crossed the lake to Tremezzina, 
called, from the extreme softness of the air through 
the winter, Baiee. The count assured us, as far as 
climate was concerned, we might as well remain 
here as go to Naples. We landed at the Villa Som- 
mariva, the crack show-place of all the " petits par- 
adis" of Lake Como. We ascended to the man- 
sion by several flights of marble steps, with odorous 
vines and shrubs in flower clustering round the bal- 
ustrades, and a fountain at every landing-place, and 
entered a magnificent vestibule, in the centre of 
which stands a Mars and Venus, in form, costume, 
and expression, such as you would expect to find 
the aborigines of this land — types of valour and 
love. 

The chef d'oeuvre of the villa is in this apartment, 
one of Thorwaldsen's most celebrated works : a frieze 
in bas-reliefs representing the triumph of Alexander, 
but designed with consummate art to bear an obvi- 
ous allusion to the most brilliant events of Napo- 
leon's life. The work was begun by Napoleon's 
order ; but, before it was finished, he could neither 
be flattered by its refined adulation nor reward it 



LAKE COMO. 75 

Count Sommariva purchased it, and it subsequently- 
passed, with the villa, into the hands of a man by 
the name of Richad who had been quietly gaining 
money while Napoleon was winning and losing em- 
pires. Richad is dead, and his only son has lately 
died intestate, leaving this superb place, where art 
has, as usual, been chained to fortune, to some far- 
off cousins, poor and plebeian, who hardly know a 
bust from a block of marble. 

Here, in another apartment, is " the Palamedes," 
considered one of Canova's master-pieces. They 
told us an anecdote of this that will please you. 
When Canova had nearly completed this statue 
it fell, and the artist just escaped being crushed 
by it. The statue was badly mutilated, and Ca- 
nova at once wrote to Sommariva that he would 
make him another in its stead. Sommariva replied 
that he would have this statue and no other, and 
that he should value it all the more for it being con- 
nected with so interesting a circumstance as the provi- 
dential preservation of the great artist; so, good 
surgery being done upon it, here it stands ; a monu- 
ment of the integrity of the great artist, and the del- 
icacy and generosity of his employer. Remember, 
these are traits of Italian character, and that such inci- 
dental instances of virtue are proofs they are not quite 
the degraded people prejudice and ignorance repre- 
sent them. There are other beautiful works of Canova 
here ; his Cupid and Psyche, an exquisite personifica- 
tion of grace and love, as innocent as if it had been 
modelled in paradise before bad thoughts were put 



76 LAKE COMO. 

into Eve's head. I noticed a pretty clock designed 
by Thorwaldsen ; two lovers sleeping with clasped 
hands while time is passing unheeded. There is an 
Andromeda, an antique, charming — but I am not giv- 
ing you an inventory — the house is filled with works 
of art. Among the paintings, and the gem of them 
all, is the portrait of a beautiful woman by Leonardo 
da Vinci — some human beauty like Laura, and Bea- 
trice, that the poetry of love idealized. 

I have been rather more particular than usual, my 
dear C, in my account of the Italian villas ; for I 
think it will rather surprise you, as it did me, after 
the chilling accounts we have read of the neglected 
grounds and ruined palaces of the poverty-stricken 
Italians, to find that some of them are enjoying all 
the luxuries of life in the midst of gardens to which 
nature, climate, art, and wealth have given the last 
touch of perfection. 

We were hardly in our boat again when the 
clouds spread like an unfurling sail over us, and a 
wind called Breva came down from Como, curling 
the lake into yeasty waves. We were all shiver- 
ing, and the boatmen sagaciously proposed we should 
warm ourselves with a walk ; so we got out into the 
footpath that skirts all the margin of the lake. It is 
paved, and about two feet wide, and kept in admi- 
rable order by the communes of the different villa- 
ges, between which it is the only land communica- 
tion, and the only land outlet to the world beyond 
Lake Como. The formation of the ground does not 
permit a carriage-road ; but how picturesque is this 



LAKE COMO. 77 

footpath, skirting along villas and gardens, under 
arches and over stone bridges, and with vineyards 
hanging over your heads. Some of us, unwilling to 
eave it, walked all the way to Como, eight miles ; 
a pedestrian feat in the eyes of our Italian friends. 

Those of us in the boat crossed the lake again to 
pass once more close under Pasta's villa ; but the 
cloudy twilight was so dreary, and so rapidly deep- 
ening, that we had little hope of getting even a 
glimpse of the genius loci. But, just as we were 
gliding under her terrace, her daughter appeared on 
it, followed by another lady. "E Pasta ! e Pasta /" 
exclaimed our bateliers in suppressed voices, thrill- 
ing with enthusiasm, that none but Italians in their 
condition would have felt in such a presence. They 
suspended their oars, and we stood on tiptoe, and 
heard a few accents of that voice that has thrilled 
millions. It was in the harsh, crackling Milanese, 
however, so that our excitement was a pure homage 
to genius. 



We passed the night at Como, and took our last 
look of its lovely lake this morning. Last looks 
are always sad ones. In travelling, you have many 
a love at first sight — with Nature. You grow into 
sudden acquaintance with material things. They 
are your friends — for lack of others, dear C. 

The road from Como to Milan is such as you 
would expect princes to make for their own chariot- 
wheels. The Austrian government, sparing as it is 

G2 



78 MILAN. 

in all other improvements for the public good, is at 
immense expense to maintain the roads in this abso- 
lute perfection. After four or five weeks of contined 
and drenching rain, there is not as much mud as an 
ordinary summer shower would make on one of our 
best " turnpikes !" In many places the road is raised 
ten and twelve feet above the level of the surrounding 
ground. There is a foot-path on each side, protected 
by granite blocks like our mile-stones, which occur at 
intervals of twelve or fifteen feet. Each block costs 
seven francs. The lands here are possessed by great 
proprietors, and those which are suited to the culture 
of the mulberry produce large profits. Some mul- 
berry lands are valued at a thousand livres the 
perche, A perche is one thousand eight hundred 
square braccia, and a braccia is twenty-two and a 
half English inches. An Austrian livre, or zwan- 
ziger, is nearly equivalent to a Yankee shilling (sev- 
enteen and a half cents). The ordinary price of a 
perche is four hundred zwanzigers. The peasants 
are paid by shares of the products. We asked C — i, 
from whom we were receiving this information, how 
the landlord could be sure of the tenant's fair deal- 
ing. He said the landlord's right to send him adrift 
was enough to secure that. A threat to do this is 
always effectual. All his little world of associations 
and traditions bind him to the soil on which he was 
born. Knowledge opens no vistas for him into other 
and richer lands. He never hears the feeblest echo 
of the " march of improvement." He is rooted to 
the soil, and, so far from a wish to emigrate, no 



MILAN. 79 

prospect of advancement will induce him to migrate 
from one village to another; ejection is a sen- 
tence of death. The Comasques are peculiar in 
their customs. Each valley has its trade. An in- 
genious man goes off to Milan and sets up his work- 
shop. He receives apprentices only from his own 
valley. As soon as he acquires a little property he 
returns to his native place — invariably returns. 
Wherever you see an Italian, in London, or Paris, 
or New-York, hawking little images about the 
streets, you may be sure he comes from the shores of 
Lake Como, and that he will follow his guiding-star 
back there. They return with enough to make them 
passing rich in these poor districts. You meet men 
in these secluded places speaking half a dozen lan- 
guages. 

Each commune is obliged to maintain a physician, 
a surgeon, and a midwife. 

St. Charles made great efforts to elevate the char- 
acter of the people, and C — i imputes the superior 
morality of the Milanese to other Italians to this 
philanthropic saint. In his zealous reforms of the 
priesthood, he went to the source of Catholic moral- 
ity. It has become a law of the commune to main- 
tain the schools he instituted ; but the people are too 
poor and too ignorant to profit as they should by 
them. "Without a theoretical notion of the effects of 
freedom and property, they feel that there is no ad- 
vantage in learning the use of tools while they are 
bound hand and foot. 

I told you they were maintained by shares of the 



80 MILAN. 

products. The extremely low rate of wages, when 
they receive them, will show you how small their 
share is. A labouring man is paid sixteen Milanese 
sous (seventeen to a franc) per day, a woman ten. 
and a child seven. With this they find themselves. 
Think of our labourers with their dollar a day — their 
meat three times per diem — their tea, and sugar, and 
butter, and what not ? while the Milanese peasant 
lives on coarse bread and thin broth, and only eats 
meat on his patron-saint's day, at a wedding, or at 
Christmas ; and this is the gift of his landlord. One 
who eats rice every day is opulent, and he who eats 
meat every day is the aristocrat of the village. The 
improvement in manufactures is putting it into the 
power of a few among them to wear woollens in win- 
ter. But, thank Heaven, their soft airs wrap them 
about as with a blanket; and the cheerfulness which 
their delicious climate, and perhaps the simplicity of 
their food, inspire, is like the fresh and fruitful young 
boughs of their olives springing from a decayed and 
sapless stem. 

It is possible the peasant may derive a certain 
kind of pleasure from knowing that, politically, he is 
on a level with his lord. The government is, in one 
sense, to them a perfect democracy — a dead level of 
nothingness. Our proud and noble friend had the 
same liability to Austrian conscription as the mean- 
est peasant on his estate, and his vote (they do vote 
in municipal affairs) counts no more than his who 
eats broth and black bread. The spirit of the Mi- 
lanese gentleman is not broken down by ages of op- 



MILAN. 81 

pression. Very few among them court the favour 
of the Austrian government, or will accept a share 
in it. Like the most intelligent and conscientious of 
our slave-holders (and with far better reason), they 
submit to the evil only because they hold it to be 
irremediable. But is any mcral evil irremediable to 
those who will adopt the axiom of the noble old 
blind man of Ancona, "Nothing is impossible to 
those who fear not death." 

C — i believes the government of the Lombardo- 
Venitian kingdom to be the best in Italy. He was 
cautious in his expressions, and went no farther than 
to say, in relation to the newspapers allowed ("priv- 
ilegiati") in Milan, " We only know so much as the 
government chooses we shall know. Our opinions 
are our own while we keep them to ourselves ; but 
he who should express liberal ones would incur the 
risk of a ' chambre obscure.' " 

With our defective opportunities of peisonal ob- 
servation, you may imagine the conversation of a 
man so intelligent and highly informed as C — i, and 
who, from being the lord of a long-transmitted in- 
heritance, has much practical acquaintance with the 
organization and peculiarities of Italian life, was a 
pleasure to us, and our drive seemed to have been a 
very short one when we entered the gate of Milan, 
and C — i ordered his coachman to drive on to the 
Corso. The day was dingy; and, though there 
were a few brilliant coaches, and handsome ladies 
in them, C — i warned us not to imagine we had any 
adequate impression of this drive, which is second in 



82 MILAN. 



display only to that of Hyde Park. We noticed the 
viceroy's gilded coach with six horses drawn up, 
while he and his family were enjoying the luxury of 
a walk. 



Another day in Milan has been busily passed 
in visiting the Ambrosian library, where we saw, 
among many celebrated pictures, an exquisite one 
designed by Leonardo da Vinci, and finished by his 
pupil Luini. It is called a madonna, but is, in fact, 
a prophetic portrait of M. W. ; the same full, rich 
eye with all a mother's rapture in it ; the same ca- 
pacity of sympathy with joy or sorrow expressed in 
the flexible lips ; as unlike as possible to the gentle, 
not to say tame madonnas that throng the galleries 
indicating merely placid maternal satisfaction. 

We saw papyrus with writing 2000 years old, 
and notes to a book in Petrarch's autograph, and 
various other things that it is well to see, but very 
tiresome to hear about. The Cassino de' JYegoziante 
was shown us by way of giving us a glimpse of 
Italian modes of society. It is a large house with a 
series of apartments: a ball, drawing room, &c, 
&c, where gentlemen and ladies meet together on 
stated evenings to amuse themselves. All classes 
have these cassinos. They save the bother of invi- 
tations and intrusion on the order of families, and 
much of the expense of private entertainment. 

We went in the evening, by his appointment, to 
Manzoni's. The Italian seems to indemnify himself 




MILAN. 83 

for not roving over the world by walling in a little 
world of his own, which he calls a house. We 
were shown through a suite of empty apartments 
to the drawing-room, where we found Manzoni, 
his mother, wife, and children, and all the shows 
and appliances of comfortable domestic life. Man- 
zoni is a little past fifty, with an intellectual and 
rather handsome face, and a striking expression of 
goodness. His manner is gentlemanly and modest, 
not shy, as we had been told. Indeed, his reputa- 
tion for shyness and fondness for seclusion induced 
us to decline a very kind invitation to pass a day at 
his country place. We thought it but common hu- 
manity not to take advantage of his readiness to hon- 
our Confalonieri's draft in our behalf on his hospi- 
tality — now I regret an irretrievable opportunity lost. 
He was cordial in his manners, and frank and 
fluent in his conversation. He and his mother (the 
daughter of Beccaria), a superb-looking old lady, 
expressed an intelligent interest in our country, 
and poured out their expressions of gratitude for 
what they were pleased to term our kindness to 
their exiles, as if we had cherished their own lost 
children. I put in a disclaimer, saying, you know 
how truly, that we considered it a most happy 
chance that had made us intimately acquainted with 
men who were an honour to their species. Manzoni 
said this was all very well in relation to Confaloni- 
eri ; he came to us with his renown ; but, as to the 
rest, we must have been ignorant of everything 
about them but their sufferings. " G.," he said, 



84 MILAN. 

" has found a country with you ; and he deserves it, 
for he is an angel upon earth."* When' I respond- 
ed earnestly, he replied with a significant laugh, 
" Now that you know what our mauvais sujets are, 
you can imagine what our honest men must be !" 

Manzoni had not heard of the American translation 
of the Promessi Sposi, and he seemed gratified that 
his fame was extending over the New World. 
Would that it could go fairly forth without the 
shackles of a translation. He told us some interest- 
ing anecdotes of Beccaria. He said he was so in- 
dolent that he never wrote without being in some 
sort forced upon it ; that his celebrated essay on 
criminal law was procured by the energetic manage- 
ment of a friend, who invited him to his house, and 
locked him up, declaring he should not come out 
till he had written down his inestimable thoughts 
on that subject. Beccaria good-naturedly acqui- 
esced, and the work was actually finished in this 
friendly prison. 

" And much reason," Madame Manzoni (the 
elder) said, " my father had to rejoice in it, for he 
often received letters of most grateful acknowledg- 
ment from individuals who had profited by the hu- 
mane doctrines of his book." 

* I trust I shall not appear to have been betrayed into publishing 
the above by a petty vanity. The little kindness we have had the 
opportunity of extending to the exiled Italians we count good for- 
tune, not merit. It has been requited a hundred fold by the privi- 
lege of their intimate acquaintance. But I would, as far as in my 
humble way I can, remove the narrow belief that there is no hospi- 
tality, no gratitude among their countrymen. 



BRESCIA. 85 

Our friends have continued their kindness to the 
last moment — the whole family, C, Count C — i, and 
dear Madame T. She urged us to renounce our 
journey to Venice, and spend a week at her villa. 
This was almost irresistible ; but leaving out Venice 
in seeing Italy is like losing bishop or castle in a 
game of chess. So our bills are paid, our post- 
horses ordered, and we are going, feeling as if we 
had lived a little life here ; for we have made ac- 
quaintance, and ripened them into friendships ; we 
have gone out and returned ; we have eaten, and 
drank, and made merry, and must now go forth 
again unknowing and unknown. There is no such 
lengthener of human life as travelling. 



Brescia. — A bright, attractive-looking town, with 
thirty thousand inhabitants, clean streets, and fine 
old edifices, built from the ruins of ancient temples, 
and a rich surrounding country, covered with villas, 
vines, and mulberries, and watered by three rivers, 
which are just now fearfully illustrating the old 
proverb, " good servants, but bad masters." Italy 
has been anything but a land of the sun to us. 
This morning the clouds dispersed, for the first time 
since we were on Lake Como, and Francois assures 
us that the priests, who " know all about these mat- 
ters," pronounce the rain " une chose finie." " La 
Sainte Vierge" has been gracious, and to-morrow 
she is to be unveiled and exhibited to her worship- 

Vol. II.— H 



86 VERONA. 

pers. In the mean time, half the country is sub- 
merged; the fearful Po has burst through its em- 
bankments and overwhelmed several villages. It is 
a pity " La Sainte Vierge" has been so slow in her 
compassions. 

We have just been to see the " scavi," or Roman 
remains, which, within the last twenty years, have 
been discovered and disinterred here. In 1820, the 
top of a pillar was seen. This led to excavations, 
which ended in bringing to upper earth a temple of 
Hercules, a curia, very beautiful mosaic pavements, 
richly-sculptured altars, a multitude of busts, shat- 
tered friezes, and broken pillars, and a bronze statue 
of Victory of the best period of Grecian art. Vic- 
tory ! I doubt it ; she has an expression of such Di- 
vine sweetness, as if she might weep at the fantas- 
tic tricks and cruel games men have played and 
called them victories. This is the first time w r e 
have seen any striking remains of Roman magnifi- 
cence and art, on the very spot where they stood 
in the eye of those whose souls were breathed into 
their forms ; and the first time is an epoch in one's 
life ! 



Verona. — We left Brescia this morning at seven ; 
a morning comme il y en a peu nowadays. When I 
opened my blind at six, Venus hung over our jessa- 
mine-imbowered balcony, as brilliant as when she 
kept her watch at Bellagio. We have been driving 
on the Via Emilia — a pretty old road, and kept in 



VERONA. 87 

excellent repair. Our first halt was at Desenzano, 
on the shores of the Lago di Garda, the ancient Be- 
nacus. The lake is nearly enclosed by Alps, and 
the climate is so softened by its mountain-wall that 
the most delicate southern fruits are ripened on its 
shores. The fish of this lake were sung by epicure- 
poets of old, and are quite as much relished by the 
moderns. Catullus, who was born at Verona, had 
his favourite villa here, on the peninsula of Ser- 
mione. Its beautiful position was pointed out to us. 
The lake preserves the stormy character Virgil gave 
it in his time. Not a breath stirred the leaves as 
we walked along the shore, and yet the blue waves 
came with their white crests dancing towards us, 
and gave K. rather too spirited a salutation. Al- 
ways excepting Como, this Lago di Garda, with its 
surroundings, is the most beautiful sheet of water I 
have ever seen.* For an hour we drove in view of 
the lake, and during the whole drive we have had 
beautiful objects under our eyes : a chateau with its 
long lawn and avenues, a shrine, a crucifix, an old 
wall, a bridge, and the Alps bounding our horizon. 
The sterile Alps, our guide-book calls them, but what 
is there on earth so rich in beauty, so suggestive to 
the imagination 1 This is the richest part of Lom- 
bard)', covered with mulberries and vines, and 
thronging with, as it appears to us, a healthy popu- 
lation, full fed from the cradle to the grave. The 

* I had not then been to Bevay and Montreux, nor seen the lake 
of Luzerne ; but each has its peculiar charm that is not lessened by 
comparing it to another. 



88 VERONA. 

children are stout and rosy, with masses of bright 
curling hair. The women are tall and well-develop- 
ed, and the old people so old that one would think 
they must themselves have forgotten they were ever 
young — the last thing they do forget. But they 
are never " rocked in the cradle of reposing age" 
— never cease from their labours. We see even the 
very old women, with their gray heads bare or cov- 
ered with a fanciful straw hat, driving asses and 
leading cows on the highway. Whenever our car- 
riage stops there are plenty of beggars around us, 
but they are for the most part sick or maimed. 
Comparing the peasantry of Savoy with that here, 
this climate would seem to be bed and board to 
them. 

The first object that struck our eyes on entering 
Verona was a very curious old bridge over the Adige, 
and from that moment till we reached our inn we 
kept up a choral exclamation at the piazzas, the fa- 
mous old palaces, the immense houses, half as high 
as the Alps, and at the heavy stone balconies. 

Verona, a powerful city in the time of the Romans, 
and so distinguished in the middle ages when the 
bold lords of the Scala family ruled its destinies, has 
now dwindled down to a population of 50,000. To 
me it bears a charmed name, as recalling the time 
when, a child of seven years, I sat down on the car- 
pet by the " old bookcase" to read " the Two Gen- 
tlemen of Verona," the only one of Shakspeare's 
plays now to me unreadable. But Juliet is, to every 
English-blooded traveller, the genius loci of Verona ; 



VERONA. 89 

Juliet, that sweetest impersonation of the universal 
passion whose mortality Shakspeare has converted 
into immortality, and fixed her shrine here. We set 
off in a half hour after our arrival, with a dirty, 
snuffing old valet de place (I have an antipathy to 
the best of the genus), to see the locales of the 
" sweet saint." The palace of the Capulets, so call- 
ed, is a gloomy, dark old rack-rent edifice, now a hos- 
tlerie ! We were conducted through an arched way 
into a court lumbered with carts loaded with wine- 
casks. The £k balcony" was half way to heaven, 
where poor Juliet needed, in truth, a "falconer's 
voice" to be heard by her lover. The garden, we 
were told, was beyond the court, but we saw no 
" orchard-wall, high and hard to climb," that " Love's 
light" wings alone might pass, and we were eager 
to get away before imagination should lose forever 
the power of recalling the orange groves and myr- 
tle bowers, the passionate girl in the balcony, the 
lover in the garden, and the moon " tipping with sil- 
ver all those fruit-tree tops." 

We drove half a mile beyond the gate to the old 
Franciscan monastery where tradition has placed the 
tomb of the Capulets; and here, in a dreary gar- 
den, we were shown the spot where the tomb was. 
And alas for the disenchantments that yet awaited 
us! A servitora unlocked something very like a 
barn-door, and admitted us into something very like 
a barn, where she showed us an open stone sarcoph- 
agus of Verona marble, which, she assured us, con- 

H2 



90 VERONA. 

tained Juliet's body when it was removed from the 
garden to this place for safe keeping. There was a 
stone pillow for her head, and a socket for a candle, 
which it is, to this day, the custom of the Veronese 
to place lighted in the coffin. There were two holes 
drilled for ventilation, probably to admit air enough 
to support the flame. 



In the heart of the city, enclosed by an iron railing 
of most delicate workmanship, are the tombs of the 
Scala family. When all records are lost but Shaks- 
peare's, which will undoubtedly outlive all others^ 
these may be shown for the tombs of the Capulets. 
There are monuments curiously sculptured, with 
marble sarcophagi and effigies. Three are more 
elaborate than the rest, and these run up into pinna- 
cles and are surmounted with statues, an equestrian 
one overshadowing the rest. " This," our cicerone 
said, " was of the greatest lord of Verona." It 
should then be of Cane della Scala.* 

There is an amphitheatre here built of blocks of 
stone without cement, and as early as Trajan's time, 
which is in admirable preservation. Napoleon re- 
paired it in excellent taste, so that it now appears 
quite perfect. It can accommodate 25,000 persons. 

* " The first of the Lombard princes, he protected the arts and 
sciences ; his court, the-asylum of all the exiled Ghibelines, drew to- 
gether the first poets, painters, and sculptors of Italy. There are 
still at Verona glorious monuments of the protection he extended to 
architecture. But war was his favourite passion," &c.—Histoire des 
Republiques Italimnes. 



JOURNEY TO PADUA. 91 

I have not half finished the sight-seeing of this crowd- 
ed afternoon, but I spare you. 

K. and I returned from a truant stroll in the morn- 
ing in time to swallow our breakfasts, and to re- 
monstrate against an over-charge in our bill : a 
hateful task that falls to my share, and often makes 
rae regret the days when I went on like a lady, qui- 
etly paying prices, and scarcely knowing them. 
But we have, in truth, little to complain of. The 
inn-charges are seldom extravagant ; and as to im- 
positions strictly, I think we rarely meet with them. 
Good policy has arranged these matters on these 
great high-roads. We poorer Americans must pay 
the rates which luxurious English travellers, who 
" lard this lean earth," have introduced. 



Padua. — We have now travelled nearly across the 
Lombardo-Venitian kingdom. The posting, which all 
over the Continent is a government monopoly, is well 
arranged, but much dearer than in Germany. The 
German postillion is the least civilized of Germans, 
but the Italian is still lower in the scale of humani- 
ty. His horses, too, are inferior in size and muscle, 
but they seem to have a portion of the spirit of their 
masters, and travel more fleetly than the heavy 
German horse. 

Though we are on the verge of winter, the char- 
acteristics of the country are manifest. Roses are 
yet blooming. At the post-stations women throng 
to our coach- windows with waiters filled with grapes, 



92 JOURNEY TO PADUA. 

pears, apples, and nespoli. The people are all out 
of doors, women spinning by the road-side, combing 
their hair, and performing other offices that we at 
all seasons reserve for in-doors. We stopped at Vi- 
cenza, which is now a town of some 30,000 inhab- 
itants, long enough to see some of the best produc- 
tions of Palladio, one of the celebrated architects of 
Italy, who lived in the sixteenth century, and was 
born here. All Northern Italy is embellished by his 
designs and works. I am no critic in these matters, 
but a too lavish profusion of ornament seems to me 
to characterize them. The work esteemed his mas- 
ter-piece is at Vicenza. It is called the Olympic 
Theatre, and w r as built precisely on the model of the 
ancient Greek theatre, that the Vicenzans might get 
a precise idea of the mode of Grecian dramatic ex- 
hibitions. The scenery is a fixture representing the 
entrance of a Greek town and the openings into 
seven different streets, where you see houses, tem- 
ples, and triumphal arches. The stage is not much 
larger than a generous dining-table. Then there 
are Corinthian columns and rows of statues extend- 
ing all around the theatre. There are fourteen 
ranges of seats for the spectators ; and with all this 
lavishment of genius, art, and money, there have 
been but two exhibitions here, one for the emperor, 
and one for his viceroy. You will agree with me 
that Palladio might have spent his time, and the Vi- 
cenzans their money, better than on this, after all, 
mere toy. The private houses here are most richly 
ornamented with architectural embellishments. Pal- 



PADUA. 93 

ladio was one of the few prophets honoured in his 
own country. 



The inhabitants of Padua have dwindled down to 
55,000 : about three times the number of the stu- 
dents it once gathered within the walls of that ven- 
erable university where Galileo lectured. The ex- 
terior wall of the university is covered with busts in 
bas-reliefs, escutcheons, and various sculpture, illus- 
trating the men who have been distinguished here. 

Petrarch, you know, was born at Arqua, in this 
neighbourhood, and was a canon in the church here, 
where, if one may judge by the zeal with which 
every memorial of him is cherished, his love-sonnets 
were not considered uncanonical. There is a picture 
of the Madonna at the Cathedral presented by him. 
There was a curtain over it ; our servitora said, " If 
the ladies commanded, it should be uncovered." We 
were so disgusted with this contrivance to exact a 
fee, this covering up a picture from its worshippers 
to uncover it to the gaze of heretics for a paltry hire, 
that we declined the offer.* We saw in the sacristy 
a bust of Petrarch and a portrait painted by his con- 
temporary Ciambellini. 

* We were not long in learning to smile at our own pharisaical 
Quixotism, and to discard it. The best pictures in the Italian 
churches are veiled, that they may be "ne'er seen but wondered 
at" by the devout, and ne'er seen but paid for by the stranger, be 
he heretic or orthodox And certainly it is just the possessor should 
derive an income from such a capital, and the sight of the picture 
is worth ten times the trifling sum it costs. 



94 PADUA. 

We have a strange feeling in this old world, dear 
C, as if the dead of all past ages were rising to life 
on every side of us. We saw in the hall of justice 
here, a noble hall 300 feet long, and adorned with 
frescoes by Giotto, a bust of Titus Livius, which was 
disinterred in the environs of this his native city. 
The Roman remains and memorials in Lombardy are 
comparatively few; and it is not to the days of Ro- 
man dominion that the mind recurs, but to the period 
of Italian independence. You perceive in these rich 
plains of Lombardy the source in nature of the indi- 
vidual life, vigour, and power of the free Italian cit- 
ies, in these warm plains completely irrigated, and 
producing without measure corn, wine, and the mul- 
berry-tree, those surest natural sources of wealth. 
And you perceive still, in the noble physiognomy of 
the people, the intellectual character that made Italy 
the seat of art, literature, commerce, and manufac- 
tures, while civilization had scarcely dawned on the 
rest of Europe. With what feelings must idle, 
shackled, impotent Italy look back on those days 
when her looms were sending their gorgeous fabrics 
wherever there was money to pay for them ; when 
her envoys could truly declare in Eastern courts that 
they saw nothing there more luxurious than they 
had seen in the palaces of their native princes ; the 
days when their historians, their poets, and their 
painters were creating works for all posterity. These 
were the days when Milan and Brescia, Verona, Vi-. 
cenza, and Padua, and all the rest of their glorious 
company, were republics ; when freedom was so dear- 



JOURNEY TO VENICE. 95 

ly prized that it was an axiom that " blessed were 
those that died for liberty and their country ;" when 
an insolent imperial letter was torn from a herald's 
hands and trampled under foot; when a beautiful 
matron, in a famishing town, with her infant in her 
arms, who had subsisted for days on boiled leather, 
offered the nourishment in her breast to a fainting 
soldier, that he might up and " do or die ;" when 
Milan, with her houses razed to the ground, and her 
inhabitants driven forth, again rose and successfully 
resisted imperial aggression. And now Austrian 
soldiers keep the gates of these cities, and say who 
shall enter and who depart. No wonder that the 
Italian's heart burns within him, that the noblest 
spirits are torpid with despair, languish in prison, or 
are driven into exile. 



Venice, November 18. — There are three posts 
(about seven miles each) from Padua to Venice. 
The usual boundaries of land and water are so 
changed by the overflowings of the rivers, that I 
fear we are getting no very accurate notions of the 
face of the country in its ordinary condition. You 
are conscious you are approaching a city that gather- 
ed to itself the riches of the world, and whose 
market converted marshy lands into gardens, vine- 
yards, and golden fields. There are, what we have 
not seen elsewhere, pleasant-looking, isolated cotta- 
ges, with thatched and conical roofs, and an infinity 
of villages, churches, chapels, and magnificent villas, 



96 JOURNEY TO VENICE. 

whose grounds appear like drawing-rooms pretty 
well rilled with poetic gentlemen and ladies, dressed 
and undressed artistically. In sober truth, there are 
many more statues out of doors here than you see 
people with us in the finest weather. The houses 
are magnificent, many built after the designs of Pal- 
ladio, and, like everything of his, prodigally orna- 
mented ; they are surrounded with high walls, with 
arched stone entrances and iron gates, with statues 
at the gates, and statues on the walls at short inter- 
vals. 

The roses are still in bloom, though the trees are 
nearly stripped of their leaves. Last night, for the 
first time, we had a slight frost. At Fusina, a mis- 
erable little town, infested with beggars, postillions, 
douaniers, and loungers, screaming, and racketing, 
and racking us, we left our carriage and embarked 
in a gondola. Yes, dear C, a gondola, which, all 
our heroic-poetic associations to the contrary not- 
withstanding, is the most funereal-looking affair you 
ever saw afloat. They are without exception cov- 
ered by a black awning, first imposed by a sumptu- 
ary law of the republic, and maintained, probably, 
by the sumptuary laws of poverty. 

Venice is five miles from Fusina, and, seen from 
thence, appears like a city that has floated from its 
moorings, and, while distance lends its " enchant- 
ments to the view," still like a queen " throned on 
her hundred isles," or, rather, as its proud represent- 
ative, who refused his oath of adhesion to Henry 
VII., said, as if it were " a fifth essence, belonging 



VENICE. 97 

neither to the Church nor the emperor, the sea nor 
the land !" Nature, too, lent us her enchantments ; 
the sun setting - , as we crossed the Lagoon, coloured 
the Rheetian Alps with rose and purple hues, which 
the waves that played around our gondola reflected, 
"while the pale moon hung over the Adriatic. I 
cannot describe to you the sensation of approaching 
such fallen greatness as that of Venice. It is as if 
a " buried majesty" appeared to you from the dead. 
We passed in silence the magnificent Piazza St 
Marco, and were landed at the steps of the Hotel 
Reale, formerly the Palazzo Bernardo. 



We went in the twilight last evening, my dear 
C, to the piazza, passed the ducal palace and 
the Bridge of Sighs, to get the feeling that we 
are actually in Venice; and in this piazza, sur- 
rounded, as you are, by magnificent and unimpair- 
ed objects, it is not difficult to realize Venice's 
past wealth and splendour ; it is only difficult to be- 
lieve that it is 'past. There is the Church of St. 
Mark, uniting Oriental magnificence with Moorish 
architecture and Christian emblems ; its facade em- 
bellished with ecclesiastical history written in mo- 
saic;* and over its principal arched entrance the 

* At least that little episode in the history of the church is de- 
picted here which relates to the transfer of St. Mark's body from 
Alexandrea to Venice. The first scene represented is the pious fraud 
enacted by the Christians when they hid the body of their saint in a 
basket under piles of pork, from which the Mussulmans are repre- 
sented as recoiling. The story ends with the last Judgment. St. 

Vol. II.— I 



98 VENICE. 

four horses of Lysippus, the seeming insignia of vic- 
tory, so often have they tramped over the world at- 
tached to the victor's car. These mute images put 
the greatness and the littleness of the world and its 
players into striking antithesis. They were the em- 
blems of Corinth's glory, of Rome's, of Constantino- 
ple's, of Venice', and of Napoleon's. Their king- 
doms, their glory, and their generations have passed 
away, and here these four brazen horses stand un- 
scathed! Three sides of the piazza are surrounded 
with very handsome edifices, with arcades gay with 
shops and cafes.* On the fourth is a space open to the 
sea , called the piazzetta (small piazza). On one side 
of this is the very beautiful facade of the ducal pal- 
ace ; a mixture, I believe, of Gothic and Moorish ar- 
chitecture, but so unlike anything European that we 
have seen, and so like architectural pictures of the 
East, that we seemed at once to have passed into 
the Asiatic world. Near the water stand two gran- 
ite columns, one surmounted by the lion of St. Mark, 
the other by the statue of a saint. Both these col- 
umns were brought from the East, and are trophies of 
the conquests of the republic in the eleventh century. 
Opposite the ducal palace is another palace of beau- 
tiful architecture, and beside it the campanile, the 

Mark's Gospel, said to be written by his own hand, is among the 
treasures of the church. " The Venetians chose St. Mark," says 
M. Sismondi, " patron of their state, his lion figured in their arms, and 
his name in their language whenever they designated with peculiar 
affection their country or government." 

* Over these cafes and shops the nobles once had luxurious casi- 
nos, where they indulged in every species of pleasure. 



VENICE. 99 

same on which Galileo stood to make his observa- 
tions. " This is Venice !" we said, as, after gazing 
for a half hour on this unimpaired magnificence, we 
turned to go to our hotel ; but our illusion vanished 
when we looked off upon the water, and saw but 
here and there a little boat, where there were once 

" Argosies bound 
From Tripolis, from Mexico, and England, 
From Lisbon, Barbary, and India!" 



I went before breakfast this morning to St. Mark's, 
and, as I paused for a moment at the door to look 
up at the figure of the saint on a ground of blue 
and gold, two persons, sinners I am sure, drew my 
eyes and thoughts from him. They were young 
men who appeared as if they had that moment land- 
ed from some piratical expedition. The one was 
looking about him with a careless curiosity; there 
w r as a wild, savage desolation about the other I nev- 
er can forget ; his face was bronzed, and his tangled 
locks stood out as if they were of iron. I met his 
quick, glancing eye, but I am sure he did not see 
me, nor anything in the world around him ; the gor- 
geous ceiling, the Oriental marbles, the costly altars, 
pictures, bronzes, were to him as if they were not, 
and on he strode as if he were on a sea-beach, 
straight through the kneeling congregation, not paus- 
ing till he reached the steps before the high altar, 
when he threw himself prostrate on them, and seemed 
as if he would have buried his face in the marble. 



100 VENICE. 

The people were passing up and down, jostling him, 
treadino- on him ; he moved no more than if he had 
been struck dead there. It seemed to me that I 
could hear the cry from his soul, " God be merciful 
to me a sinner !" and not till the mass was over, when 
he rose, with an expression somewhat softened and 
calmed, and taking his companion, who had been 
listlessly staring about, by the arm, and hastened 
away, could I see anything but him ; and when I 
did look around upon this most gorgeous of Chris- 
tian temples, enriched as it is with the spoils of Can- 
dia, Cyprus, and the Morea, it seemed poor indeed 
compared with the worth of this sinning, suffering, 
and penitent spirit ; for so I am certain it was. 

Few churches are so enriched with historical as- 
sociations as St. Mark's. It was here that the sub- 
jection of imperial to papal power was consumma- 
ted by the dramatic exhibition of the humiliation 
of Frederic Barbarossa to Pope Alexander, when 
the emperor prostrated himself before his holiness 
and suffered him to plant his foot upon his neck.* 
The history of this church from the time it was a 
chapel — a mere appendage to the ducal palace — 
would be a history of Venice.f 

* This most abject circumstance in Frederic's humiliation is, I 
suspect, an interpolation of the papal legendaries. M. Sismondi, the 
most reliable of historians, merely says, " He (the emperor) threw 
aside his cloak, prostrated himself before Alexander, and kissed his 
feet." The foot upon the neck was, however, too picturesque a cir- 
cumstance to be lost, and so a Venetian painter has given it perpe- 
tuity in a splendid picture which hangs in the ducal palace. 

t It was here that one of the finest scenes in the great drama of 
the crusades was enacted, when the heroic Henry Dandolo, blind, 



VENICE. 101 

We have been over the ducal palace, up the 
" Giant's Stairs," and the golden-roofed staircase, 
and through the immense halls whose ceilings and 
walls are embellished by Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, 
and Titian, with, to me — I am profane, or, perhaps, 
most ignorant to say so — uninteresting pictures. 
The portraits of the doges, which hang below the 
cornice, encircling one apartment, are not so. They 
are all there excepting one, and on the tablet where 
that should be is painted a black veil, with an in- 
scription to signify that this was assigned to Ma- 
rino Faliero ! Poor old man ! Byron has painted 
his picture there; and those who see it beneath 
the black veil scarcely look at the 120 others. The 
doges have passed away, and you meet here only 
tourists, to whom the ciceroni are explaining, in a 
semi-barbarous dialect, the painted histories of their 
reigns and triumphs. 

We went out of the palace on to the " Bridge of 

and ninety-four years old, addressed the crowds of Venetians and 
crusaders, royal, noble, and plebeian, who were assembled in St. 
Mark's. " Lords," he said, " you are of the first gentry in the 
world, and banded together for the noblest cause men ever under- 
took. I am a feeble old man who need repose ; but ill fitted as is my 
body for the service, I perceive there is none who can so well lead 
and govern you as I who am your lord. Jf you will suffer that I 
take the cross to watch over and teach you, and that my son remain 
to guard the land, I will go forth to live and die with you and with 
the pilgrims." And when this was heard, " Yes" they cried all 
with one voice ; " and we pray God also to permit that you come forth 
with us and do it." This, with many more particulars, may be found 
in the touching language of the old chronicler in M. Sismondi's Ital- 
ian Republics. 

I 2 



102 VENICE. 

Sighs" and to the prisons of the Inquisition ; for, as 
you know, 

" There is a palace and a prison on each hand." 

We went into the dungeons on a level with the sea ; 
those below its level were destroyed forever by the 
French revolutionists who, in their days of madness, 
did this among many other righteous deeds. 

The curiosities of prisons are horrors, and I shall 
not detail to you those that were shown us,* but 
leave them all for the cell where we saw the inscrip- 
tion which Lord Byron copied, and which you may 
recollect in the notes to his Childe Harold. Our ci- 
cerone, who was of a calibre very superior to most 
of his craft, read the lines with Italian taste and 
grace, and told us that Lord Byron had taken the 
pains to retrace and deepen them, " Yes, with his 
own hand."f 



20th. — We have been all the morning in our gon- 

* These hideous prisons are not more than six or seven feet 
square, with mud floors, and a grating a few inches in length and 
breadth, which opens into a gallery, into which the only ray of light 
that ever came was from the torch of the turnkey, when, once a day, 
he brought the prisoner his food. The French, when they came to 
Venice, found a man in one of these cells who had been there for four- 
teen years. They set him free, and carried him in procession through 
the grand piazza. The poor wretch was struck blind, and died in 
two or three days! 

t I was sorry afterward to hear this man agreeing with a hard-fa- 
voured wretch in calling Silvio Pellico a " menteur," and maintain- 
ing that he had never been in " the leads," which, by-the-way, they 
spoke of as " beaux prisons." 



VENICE. 103 

dola. We first rowed through the grand canal, 
which is bordered for two miles by churches and 
palaces; affecting memorials of the rise, dominion, 
perfection, decay, desertion, and death of " Venice ;" 
a death so recent that the freshness and beauty of 
life has not quite passed away.* A few of these 
palaces are still in the possession and occupancy of 
their noble families, but wherever you see one in its 
original splendour (and most splendid they are) you 
see the collar-mark upon it, " Provinzie di Venezie" 
indicating that it is appropriated to the officers and 
purposes of the Austrian government. For the 
most part they are dilapidated,! with broken glass, 
parchment panes, and indications that they are de- 
graded to base uses. 

As we passed the Foscari palace we saw a Ve- 
netian washing, patched calico gowns and all man- 
ner of trumpery drying over the massive and sculp- 
tured stone balconies of that princely home, to be- 
hold which once more an exiled son of the house 
risked and lost his life. Nearly opposite this palace 
is that which Byron occupied ; its location may have 
suggested the tragedy of " The two Foscari." And 
what painful and pleasant remembrances did his res- 
idence suggest to us as we passed under its balcony 

* "The foundation of Venice preceded by seven centuries the 
emancipation of the Lombard cities, and its fall was three centuries 
after the subjection of Florence." Truly it had a long life of power 
and glory. 

t We were told they would be taken down, and small, tenantable 
houses built from their materials, but for an order of the Austrian 
government forbidding it, why, I know not, unless they wish to pre- 
serve them as a trophy. 



104 VENICE. 

and thought of Moore's groping his way through the 
dark hall after Byron, while he called out, " Keep 
clear of the dog ! take care, or that monkey will fly 
at you !" and his droll exclamation as they stood 
together on the moonlit balcony, " Don't be poetical, 
Tom !" and, alas ! of the mock-tragic drama enacted 
here by his Formarina, and of other episodes in his 
life that he must have wished to blot out, and of 
which those who admire and pity him must wish his 
biographer had spared the record. Byron's is the 
greatest and best known of English names in Italy. 
Some of the Venetian palaces still contain treas- 
ures of art. In the Palazzo Barbarigo, where Titian 
long lived, and where he died, there is a gallery 
called " Scuola di TizianoP Here we saw a Mag- 
dalen, the last he ever painted, and the first, I think, 
ever painted. It belongs to the highest class of 
that intellectual painting which reveals the secrets 
of the soul. You see a woman who has been for- 
given much because she loved much ; a voluptuary 
by nature and a saint by grace ; and you feel as-> 
sured, from the depth and calmness of her feelings, 
that she will sin no more. The old woman who 
showed us the gallery, and who, in her progress, 
had poured out the usual quantity of a cicerone's 
superbas ! and magnificas ! said, " Other pictures 
have their prices ; this is priceless !" We have 
seen other pictures by Titian in Venice which seem 
to me to come into the same category, truly to be 
"priceless," the Assumption (called his masterpiece), 
where the loveliest cherubs, alias winged Italian 



VENICE. 105 

children, are floating in a wreath of clouds around 
her ; or the Sacrifice of Isaac, on the ceiling of the 
sacristy in Santa Maria della Salute. The beautiful 
boy is bending over the pile, awaiting the stroke, 
with an expression of most dutiful obedience, and 
something more ; there is a trustfulness, as if he felt 
his father could not do him wrong. The angel ap- 
pears with a blended expression of Divine authority 
and human sympathy, and you feel the command 
which he eagerly utters, and which the awe-struck 
patriarch has turned to receive, " Lay not thine hand 
upon the lad !"* This picture is a lyric poem ; but 
for the epics of the " Venetian school," with their 
architecture and landscape, their complication of 
action and variety of character, their groups of men, 
women, and children, Jews, infidels, and brutes, it 
requires more artistic education, and far more time 
than we have, to comprehend and enjoy them. 

The Rialtof is a stone bridge over the grand ca- 
nal, and in its material of stone and mortar precisely 
what it was when merchants there " most did con- 
gregate." But the princely merchants, who unlock- 
ed and locked at pleasure the golden gates of the 
East, have disappeared, and in their places are peo- 

* After seeing Titian's masterpieces, one enjoys the old story of 
Charles Fifth's reproof of his nobles' scorn of his plebeian favourite. 
" I can create with a breath a hundred dukes, counts, and barons, 
but, alas ! I cannot make one Titian !" 

t I do not understand why the name Rialto is used merely to des- 
ignate the bridge. " It was in 809," says M. Sismondi, " that the Ve- 
netians made choice of the little island of the Rialto, near which they 
assembled their fleet, with their collected wealth on board, and built 
ttie city of Venice, the capital of their republic." 



106 VENICE. 

pie walking up and down between the rows of mean 
shops, hawking, in the loudest and most dissonant 
tones, tortone (a famous species of candy), cakes, 
fish, and like fancy articles. An old Jew sleeping 
in the shadow of the bridge, over whom we stum- 
bled as we got out of our gondola for a moment, re- 
called my poetic associations with the Rialto ; but 
to retain them undisturbed one should not see it. 
The bridge is a high arch, and the street on each 
side of it is of course continued over it between the 
mean one-story shops which are built on it. The 
bridge has two other broad passages between the 
shabby rear of the shops and its balustrades, and 
thus encumbered and defaced is the aspect it pre- 
sents as you approach it on the canal. 



We visited the Arsenal as a memorial rather than 
an actual existence. Its silent forges and empty mag- 
azines only serve to impress you with the vast com- 
merce and power of the fallen republic. It occupies 
an island three miles in circumference, and has the 
aspect of an independent fortress. The winged lion, 
brought from the Piraeus of Athens, still guards its 
entrance, but you know too surely that his teeth and 
claws are gone by his watchdogs in Austrian uni- 
form.* We passed along a portico lined with every 

* These gentry refused entrance to our courier ; service being a 
disqualifier for such privilege here, as colour is in our enlightened 
country. We trust these shadows will, ere long, pass quite off the 
civilized world. 



VENICE. 107 

species of workshop relating to ship-building — all si- 
lent now — and, crossing through a spacious dock- 
yard where there were a score or two of galley- 
slaves in long, clanking chains, working under the 
surveillance of other slaves in a different uniform and 
without chains, called gens d'armes, we entered the 
model-room. There, among a vast variety of curi- 
ous things, we saw an exact miniature of the gal- 
ley in which the doges were accustomed to per- 
form the ceremony of their espousals with the Adri- 
atic. It is of a most graceful form, its exterior gild- 
ed and embossed with devices illustrative of the his- 
tory of Venice. The canopy is of crimson velvet; 
Venice, " a proud ladye," sits in the prow with 
Peace at her feet and the scale of Justice in her 
right hand. In the stern is the throne of the doge, 
and at its back an opening through which he threw 
the wedding-ring to his sea-bride. Opposite the 
throne sits Time, with his admonitory scythe and 
hourglass. When this was rigged, with four stal- 
wart Venetians at each crimsoned and gilded oar, it 
must have been a pretty show ! 

We were shown an immense hall filled with tro- 
phies, banners, and weapons of all their conquered 
enemies, Christians and Turks, and halls filled with 
Venetian armour; and, among other curiosities, a 
very entertaining collection of the Inquisition's in- 
struments of torture ; some among them ingenious 
and perfect enough to have been forged in the lower 
regions. Ah, cruelty has ever gone hand in hand 
with power, my dear C. 



108 VENICE. 






The perfect repose, the indolent luxury of a gon- 
dola has not been exaggerated. I cannot convey to 
you a notion of the delight of its soft cushions and 
gliding motion after a two hours of such tedious 
sight-seeing as we had at the arsenal ; it puts you 
into that delicious state between waking and sleep- 
ing, between the consciousness of fatigue and cares, 
and the unconsciousness of oblivion. 

We were rowed out to an island in the sea, San 
Lazzaro, to see the Armenian convent and college, 
whose foundations were laid long ago by an Arme- 
nian who bought the island, and instituted a school 
here for his countrymen. The pupils receive a learn- 
ed education for various professions. The college has 
a printing-press, and prints books in forty or fifty 
different languages.* A large revenue is realized 
from their sale. We were conducted about the in- 
stitution by a very intelligent and courteous Ar- 
menian priest, and we encountered some fine old 
Eastern people with long, silvered beards. The 

* Lady Morgan fancied if there were a free press in the world, it 
must be " the ocean-press of San Lazzaro;" and she relates, in her 
best manner, her conversation with the librarian, who asserted it 
was a free press. She asked if he would print a book for her that re- 
quired a " very free press." " Certainly," he replied ; " any book 
that her ladyship might write." " What, if she should speak ill of the 
Emperor of Austria V " Certainly not." " Might she have a hit at 
his holiness ?" this was worse still. Unwilling, she says, to lose her 
game, she started the grand seignior. " The grand seignior was a 
powerful neighbour." " In a word, it was evident," she concludes, 
" that the press of San Lazzaro was just as free as the Continental 
presses of Europe, where one might print freely under the inspec- 
tion of two or three censors !" 



VENICE. 109 

young men were extremely handsome. As you go 
east and south the beauty of the human race im- 
proves ; there is a richer colouring and more spirit, 
more of the sun's light in the eyes. 

Our conductor showed us the room in which 
Byron received his lessons " when his lordship took 
the whim" he said, " to study Armenian, and to swim 
across to us from the Lido !" 

As we were rowing homeward, a Venetian gen- 
tleman who accompanied us pointed out the Canali 
degli Orfani, where bodies are thrown which any 
one wishes quietly to dispose of. " Fishing here," 
he said, " is forbidden, lest it should lead to unpleas- 
ant discoveries !" 



Our hotel was so full on the first day of our arri- 
val in Venice that we could only get dismal apart- 
ments in the rear, where we felt as if more than the 
ducal palace had a prison attached to it. But the 
following morning we w r ere transferred to a superb 
suite of apartments in front, looking out upon the 
sea, which have to us a charm from having been oc- 
cupied by the Countess Confalonieri when she was 
suing for her husband's pardon, with long-deferred 
and finally baffled hope, to the Austrian court. I am 
alone, the family being all at the opera, and I have 
just been standing in the balcony looking at the 
moon, w r hich is pouring a flood of light through this 
clear atmosphere down upon the sea. In her efful- 
gence Orion is but dimly visible. I can look up to 

Vol. II.— K 



110 VENICE. 

the familiar objects in the heavens, and almost forget 
my distance from you ; but the painful sense returns 
as I bring my eyes to earth, for oh ! how different is 
this earth from ours ! There is the splendid Church 
of San Georgio with her tall campanilla, and Santa 
Maria della Salute with her cupolas, and here are 
gondolas gliding out of the little canal into the Giu- 
decca, and others gliding in and out among the ves- 
sels that lie at anchor in the harbour. On my right 
is the ducal palace and prison; I cannot see the 
Bridge of Sighs, but it is almost within my touch, so 
near that I feel the atmosphere that surrounds it, and 
am glad to be cheered by the lively voices of a 
merry troop that are passing on to the piazzetta, and, 
as that sound dies away, to hear the delicious voice 
of a cavalier in a gondola, who is singing for his 
own pleasure — and certainly for mine. 



We hear so much of the gondola in Venice that 
we almost forget there is " solid earth for tread of 
feet," though for the most part artificial. After pass- 
ing the greater part of five delicious days in a gon- 
dola, I went this morning, the beginning of, alas! 
our last day in Venice, to the Rialto on foot, that I 
might see something of the terra-firma of this singu- 
lar town. There is nothing, I believe, in the world 
like the streets of Venice ; streets they can scarcely 
be called, nor lanes, nor alleys, for they have not 
the peculiarities of either. They are lined by such 
lofty houses, that, excepting at noonday, a ray of 



VENICE. Ill 

the sun never reaches them ; no wheel turns in them, 
no horse's hoof treads over them. They are inter- 
sected by the canals, and filled with petty shops 
that in no wise recall the time when Venice was the 
mart and channel of the productions of the East. 

The manners of the tradespeople are civil, but 
not obsequious or obtrusive. They have the. gener- 
al Italian habit of asking one price, and offering to 
take the half of it, " for the pleasure of serving ma- 
dame," or " to make a beginning," or for some other 
ready and most reasonable reason I* We bought 
on the Rialto some trifling specimens of the exqui- 
sitely fine gold-chain work done here, a pendant for 
the Brussels lace manufacture. These gold chains, 
some fabrics of beads, and some rather curious but 
inferior glass manufactures (all that remain of the 
unrivalled Venetian glass-works), are now the only 
products peculiar to Venice. 



We have merely seen the outside of things here. 
Our only acquaintance, a Venetian exquisite, who 
seems not to suspect there is any but an outside to 
life, could give no very enlightening answers to our 
many questions. In reply to an inquiry about the 
education of women, he shrugged his shoulders, and 
said, " ca commence !" So I suppose they are about 
as well instructed as they were in Byron's time here, 

* It is to be earnestly desired that our tradesmen should not yield 
to the temptation of this habit, which most certainly leads to a dep- 
ravation of mercantile morality. 



112 JOURNEY TO FERRARA. 

when, as you may remember, a conversation turning 
upon Washington, a learned lady asked " if he 
were not the man killed in a duel by Burke." 

I asked our acquaintance, when we were passing 
the mad-house, which looked very like a prison, " if 
the patients were well taken care of." " Assez 
bien" (" Well enough"), he replied, stroking his 
mustache. " Luck is a lord." We had our for- 
tune at Milan j we must take the turn of the wheel 
here.* 



Ferrara, Nov. 24. 

My dear C, 
We are seldom annoyed in Italy with any appa- 
rent dissatisfaction in the people we employ. The 
servants at the inns, coachmen, valets de place, 
&c, &c, are all paid by fees. They have a pride 
or self-respect which prevents their murmuring 
when they are not content.f There is a monstrous 
disproportion between the wages of people and 
the fees ; for instance, a labourer working out of 

* I perhaps owe an apology for publishing the above meager no- 
tices of Venice. Where there is most to be said it is very difficult 
to say a little well. We spent five beautiful days in going in our 
gondola from sight to sight, in visiting churches and palaces. Our 
dawns and twilights were passed at St. Mark's, within two minutes' 
walk of our hotel. Of course, we accumulated immense lists of 
things which are mere lists, and have been well expanded by a hun- 
dred tourists who have preceded us. 

f This remark does not apply to Southern Italy. All such deli- 
cacy has vanished long before you reach Naples, where " poor Oliver 
asks for more" till it would become ludicrous if it were not most 
pitiable. 



JOURNEY TO FERRARA. 113 

doors all day gets ten sous, and your waiter, who 
gives you, perhaps, two or three hours of very 
light work, expects two francs from each person, 
which, from a party of six, amounts to two dollars 
and thirty cents per day. We made a deduction from 
this at the Hotel Reale, and our garc^on, who sport- 
ed his Venetian gold chain, was " tres mecontent" 

So was not our gondolier friend, Andrea Donaio. 
He has attended us all day, the best of gondoliers, 
the most sagacious and prompt of cicerones. As 
we came away, he stood at the foot of the stone 
staircase, hat in hand, in his close-fitted, scarlet- 
corded dress, his fine black hair waving off his 
bronzed temples; his sound white teeth shown 
off by a kindly smile. I told him how glad we 
should be to see him some bright day in New- York, 
and his " Grazie, signore," and " Buon viaggio, es- 
sallenza !" were the last words we heard as we got 
into our gondola to pass for the last time before the 
prisons, the Bridge of Sighs, the ducal palace, the 
piazza, and all its magnificent accompaniments, into 
the Giudecca. 

Andrea's wishes were vain. We have had a dis- 
mal journey hither. As we left Venice, the rain 
came on again, and has continued; the rivers 
are still rising, and menacing the country with de- 
struction. You can hardly imagine anything more 
frightful than the aspect of the Valley of the Po at 
this moment. The course of the river is through a 
flat country. Deposites of slime and gravel from 
year to year have so raised its bed that, to prevent 

K2 



114 JOURNEY TO FERRARA. 

it from submerging the adjacent land, dikes have 
been erected ; and as the level of the river has ris- 
en, the dikes have been raised higher and higher, 
till now the river, at its ordinary level, is in some 
places thirty feet higher than the land on the other 
side the embankment. Whenever the river rises 
three feet above its usual level, great alarm is felt, 
and guards are placed with proper instruments ready 
to repair the slightest breach in the dike. As we 
passed along the road on the top of the embank- 
ment, the brimming, muddy river was rushing furi- 
ously on one side of us, and on the other, many 
feet below us, lay villages and farm-houses, those 
on the lowest ground half under water, and all ap- 
pearing as if they might at any moment be swal- 
lowed up. At intervals of a few yards along the 
road there were tents of matting, saturated with a 
forty days' rain, and under each two watchmen, peas- 
ants, stretched on the wet ground, their enemy on 
the one side, and their menaced homes on the other, 
with an anxiety and despair in their faces that ex- 
pressed how hopelessly they opposed themselves to 
the unbridled elements. 

Poor fellows, their case is a hard one ! The win- 
ter-grain is so soaked that it is certain it must all be 
rotted. In our thinly-peopled land, where the fail- 
ure of one year's crops is but a disappointment, you 
can hardly imagine the effect of such a disaster 
where the fullest supplies are in fearful disproportion 
to the consumption. The streets of Ferrara to-day 
are crowded with people whose homes were under 



JOURNEY TO FERRAR A. 115 

water ; 1500 are provided for — being drowned ! It 
is said that the King of Piedmont and the Duke of 
Tuscany, fearing the consequences of the despair of 
their people, have already made liberal appropria- 
tions for their relief. I hope they may have been 
instigated by a better motive than fear. The virtue 
called forth by physical evil is its only satisfactory 
solution.* 

We were to cross the Po at the barrier of the 
pope's dominions, and here, at their very portal, we 
had a charming illustration of the imbecility of the 
papal government, the most imbecile in Italy. The 
ferry appertains to his holiness. There was no boat 
on our side of the river ; and though the postillions, 
gens d'armes, and loungers shouted at the very top 
of their voices, no answer was returned ; at last we 
despatched a row-boat, and after an hour we saw a 

* The following anecdote, which I afterward heard from Mr. W. at 
Florence, may appear to others, as it did to me, an illustration of the 
above remark. While we were looking at the superb Strozzi palace 
Mr. W. said, " The head of this house, the marquis, was on his 
country estates during the distress on the Po last autumn. Seeing 
some persons on the roof of a house in instant danger of being 
swept off, he offered a large sum to some boatmen if they would go 
to the rescue. The peril was too great, and they refused. He 
doubled his offer, they still refused — they had wives and families, 
they said. • Would they go if he would go with them V ' Yes, they 
would do anything the Padrone would do.' The marquis wrote a 
few lines to a friend and embarked with them. At tremendous 
hazard they succeeded in their enterprise. By some mistake the 
note, which was only to have been opened in case the marquis 
did not return, was read, and was found to contain instructions 
that, in case his companions should be lost, their families should be 
provided for from his estate." When I was at Florence this same 
marquis was spending his time driving four in hand and philandering 
tine ladies. Truly, calamities have their uses. 



116 FERRARA. 

sluggish machine destined for our transport, and mo- 
ving as though it moved not. It was drawn by a 
rope attached to horses on the shore a mile and a 
half up the river, and then dropped down the current 
to us. After infinite difficulty, with pushing, pulling, 
and hoisting, and the din of twenty Italians who 
were all helping and all helpless, our heavy carriage 
was got on board the boat, and we were landed 
safely on the other side, and were charged by his 
holiness's servants for these admirable facilities six 
dollars. 

Ferrara is a clean, fine old city, with immense, 
unoccupied houses, and wide, grass-grown streets, 
looking little like the seat of the independent and 
proud house of Este. Its chief interest to us results 
from its being the home of our friend Foresti, whose 
character does it more honour than all this princely 
house from beginning to end. Byron, you remember, 
says of Italy, " their life is not our life — their moral 
is not our moral." This is but in part true. There 
is a moral that is universal ; and wherever man ex- 
ists, in savage or in civilized life, he renders an in- 
stinctive homage to such an uncompromising pursuit 
of justice and love of freedom as Foresti has mani- 
fested in persecution, in prison, in bonds, and under 
sentence of death. I believe that if, at this moment, 
his youth, country, and high position could be re^ 
stored to him, with his experience of sixteen years of 
chains and most dreary imprisonment, he would 
again sacrifice all, and suffer all over again in the 
same cause — such is the uncrushable material of his 
noble character. 



FERRARA. 117 

Well, here we are, in the midst of his family and 
friends. One of them, a man of letters, Signor B., 
called immediately after breakfast, and attended us, 
first, to the casino, where 300 persons, the gentry 
of Ferrara, who are its proprietors, meet every even- 
ing ; and, unless there is a ball, or they are other- 
wise particularly well amused, adjourn to an adjoin- 
ing theatre ; truly, " their life is not our life." We 
next went to St. Anne's Hospital, once a monastery, 
and now converted to the really Christian purpose of 
sheltering the sick and insane. The insane are 
under the care of a distinguished man of science, 
and, what is more to the purpose, a genuine philan- 
thropist. We have been told to-day many anec- 
dotes of him, from which we infer that his organ of 
benevolence, like our honoured friend Woodward's, 
has a particular development for the management of 
mad people.* The " minister to the mind diseased," 
in our Puritan land, takes his patients to church ; 
the Italian professor conducts them to the theatre — 
the universal panacea in Italy ; K. says, " the con- 
forto and ristoro of old and young, rich and poor." 
The different modes of proceeding are nationally 
characteristic; both prove that excitement, proper- 
ty administered, is healthful and not hurtful to the 
insane patient. 

We were shown the cell of the hospital in which 
Tasso was imprisoned. Our old custode had a loyal 

* He uses the same enlightened means, substituting truth, gen- 
tleness, and persuasion for manoeuvring, sternness, and authority. 
We saw some of the incurables quietly basking in the sunshine in a 
pleasant garden. 



118 FERRARA. 

feeling for the house of Este, and would fain have 
us believe that, dismal as the place appeared to us, 
it was quite a pleasant residence in Tasso's time, 
with one lookout upon a street and another upon a 
garden ! There was as much common sense as ge- 
nius in Byron shutting himself up in this cell to write 
his " Lament of Tasso." He was sure to find the 
actual locale of suffering innocence and kindred ge- 
nius a heated furnace for his imagination. 

The old man told us some particulars of Lord 
Byron's visit, and showed us his name written by 
himself in deep-cut characters. " Under Lord By- 
ron's name," he said, " was that of his Segretario 
Samuel Rogers." We all smiled, recurring at once 
to Mr. Rogers, as we had recently seen him, with 
his own poetic reputation, surrounded by the respect 
that waits on age, heightened into homage by his 
personal character; and K. expostulated, and tried 
to enlighten the old man's ignorance — but in vain. 
Byron's is the only English name that has risen, 
or ever will rise, above his horizon, and " the Seg- 
retario" must remain a dim-reflected light. 

B. escorted us to his house, where we were kind- 
ly received by the signora, and admitted to the 
studio of her son, who has just received a prize at 
Florence for miniature painting. They showed us 
some exquisite pictures of his execution, upon which 
I said, " You are a fortunate mother to have a son 
of such genius." " Ah !" she replied, " but he is so 
good — so good !" This does indeed make the for- 
tunate mother. In this country of art, my dear C, 



FERRARA. 119 

the painter's studio is a sort of museum. Young B.'s 
occupied several apartments containing pretty casts, 
and the walls were covered with sketches, studies 
of anatomy, engravings, and paintings. 

B., the father, gave us various works of his own 
writing : a work on botany, tragedies, and transla- 
tions from Byron.* He is an enlightened man, 
and a first-rate hater of priests and kings. Inde- 
fatigable as all are who have the hard fortune to 
take our caravan in train, he accompanied us to the 
green square, where there has been recently placed 
a colossal statue of Ariosto on a beautifully-sculptur- 
ed white marble pillar, with this comprehensive in- 
scription : " A Ludovico Ariosto la Patria." Multum 
in parvo ! is there not ? The Jesuits made a furious 
opposition to the erection of the statue, being no 
lovers of Ariosto, or favourers of any homage to 
secular eminence. They wished to put the statue of 
his holiness on the pillar, and wrote to Rome for a 
decree to that effect ; but, before the answer came, 
the wits of Ferrara had outwitted them. By dint of 
working night and day the statue had been placed 
on its lofty pedestal ; and buried under it is a histo- 
ry of the controversy, and, as B — i said, " milles 
belles choses" of the Jesuits, which, when time shall 

* Signor B. said, " If men write in Italy, it is to get a name, or for 
the love of it ; there is no pecuniary compensation. Divided as we are 
into thirteen states, there is no protection for literary property." If 
most authors are to be believed, this should not lessen the number of 
books. They write merely to enlighten or improve their public ' 
Scott is one of the few authors who has had the honesty to avow 
that getting money was a distinct motive for writing. 



120 FERRARA. 

have knocked down the column, will serve to en- 
lighten posterity as to the history and true character 
of the bigots. In the mean time, the poet stands, as 
he did in life, high above his fellows. 

As a natural sequence, we visited a house which 
Ariosto built, and where he lived and died. The 
room in which he wrote has a fine bust of him on 
one side, and on the other the following inscription : 
" Ludovico Ariosto in questa camera scrisse e ques- 
ta casa da lui abitata edificb; laquale 280 anni 
dopo la morte del divino poeta fu da Girolamo Ci- 
cognara podesta co' denari del commune compra e 
ristaurata perche alia venerazione delle genti se 
mantenesse."* Next to the possession of greatness 
is the sentiment that reverences it, and this you find 
everywhere in Italy. The door of Tasso's prison 
and that to Ariosto's room have been well chipped 
for relics. 

B. conducted us to the cemetery, an old monastic 
establishment, wrested from the priests after, as he 
said, a " guerre a mort" and converted to the good 
purpose of burying the dead instead of the living. 
The long perspective of the cloisters is beautiful. 
Many of the monks' cells are converted into family 
vaults, and decorated with monuments, frescoes, and 
bas-reliefs. One large apartment is appropriated to 
" the illustrious men of Ferrara." 

* " Ludovico Ariosto wrote in this room ; and this house, built and 
inhabited by him, was 280 years afterward bought and restored by 
Girolamo Cicognara with the commune's money, that it might be 
preserved for the veneration of mankind." 






FERRARA. 121 

We had a scene in the twilight, which I can best 
describe to you, my dear C, by copying K.'s ac- 
count of it from her journal. She says, " What was 
my astonishment, when I came into the drawing- 
room, to find Uncle R. in a corner of the room, his 
face covered with his hands, Aunt L. leaning on the 
mantlepiece also in tears, Aunt K. holding the hand 
of a lady in black, who, with vehement gestures, 
was pouring out a rapid succession of broken sen- 
tences, and L. and M. looking on in most solemn 
silence. Aunt K. seized me, and said, ' This is Fo- 
resti's sister. Tell her how much he is beloved and 
respected in New-York — tell her we try to make 
him feel he has a home among us.' As well as I 
could I played my part of interpreter, and Teresa, 
in a voice interrupted by many sighs and tears, tried 
to express her gratitude, but exclaimed every few 
minutes in a paroxysm of anguish, stretching out 
her arms, ' Io non so piu parlare ; non so piu far al- 
tro che piangere e pregar la mia Madonna !' Ta- 
king up her black gown, she said, ' Questo e un abito 
di voto ; l'ho messo quando era in prigione il mio 
Felice, per farlo liberare ; dal momento delle sue 
disgrazie sono caduta ammalata. Stave per mori- 
re ; i medici credettero che non potessi guarire. 
Sono solamente tre anni che sto un po' meglio; ho 
perso tutti i cappelli, ne aveva molti. Non ho volu- 
to mandare il mio ritratto al fratello perche sono 
tanto combiata tanto brutta che non mi riconosce- 
rebbe. Non posso dormire. Prego, prego sempre 

Vol. IL— L 



1 22 FERRARA. 

la raia Madonna che mi guarisca di quest' orribile 
veglia e che mi faccia abbraeciare una volta il mio 
Felice prima di morire. Non e che la speranza di 
vederlo che mi tiene in vita !'* This is a gathering 
up of the fragments of her discourse ; but I cannot 
give an idea of her sorrow-worn countenance, her 
impassioned tears and expressive gestures, which 
gave the most powerful effect to every word she ut- 
tered, and left a deep and sad impression on our 
minds. Just Heaven ! what must be the import to 
Francis, ( the father of his people, 9 of that sentence, 
' with what measure ye mete it shall be measured to 
you again.' " Yes, truly, those who have turned the 
sweet streams of domestic love into such bitter, bit- 
er waters — the Francises and Metternichs — will 
have a fearful account to render. 

My dear C, we have so many exiles among us, 
w T e so glorify ourselves with the idea that our free 
country is their asylum, that I fear we are some- 
times deficient in that keen sympathy which we 
should feel in their personal misfortunes, if we real- 
ized the sundered ties and languishing affections of 
the broken hearts in their violated homes. 

* " I no longer know how to talk. I can only weep and pray to 
our Lady !" Taking up her black gown, she said, " I put on this 
mourning when my brother went to prison, with a vow to wear it 
till he was freed. From the moment of his misfortune I fell sick. 
I have been near to death. The physicians believed it was impossi- 
ble to cure me. For the last three years only have I been a little 
better. I have lost all my hair. I once had a great deal. I would 
not send my portrait to my brother ; I am so changed he would not 
know me. I cannot sleep ; I pray and pray to our Lady to cure me 
of this horrible wakefulness, and that she will permit me to embrace 
my brother once- before I die. The hope of seeing him is all that 
keeps me alive !" 



FERRARA. 123 

Professor B. and some other friends of Foresti 
passed the evening with us, partly at the theatre 
and partly at home. In spite of the wear and tear 
of twenty years' separation, their attachment to him 
is unimpaired. Among them was an old curate, who 
said that, " but for his age, he would go to America 
to see Foresti." Professor B. is a highly-cultivated 
man, with that great advantage to a new acquaint- 
ance, a beautiful countenance and charming man- 
ners, and, withal, he is a hearty liberal. He told 
us some facts which may give you an idea of the 
shackles and discomforts the government imposes 
here, and of the inextinguishable spirit of these no- 
ble Italians. There is an association of the literary 
and scientific men of the different states of Italy re- 
cently formed, which is to have an annual meeting. 
It is favoured by the King of Piedmont and the 
Grand-duke of Tuscany ; but the pope, who stops 
every crevice at which light may enter, has issued a 
bull, declaring that if a subject of his shall be pres- 
ent at one of these meetings, he shall be held a trai- 
tor, and suffer accordingly. 

A physician is not permitted to make a profession- 
al visit beyond the walls of the city without going 
first to the police to declare where he is going, and 
the name and disease of his patient ! Professor B. 
said, " In 1831, when we all believed the favourable 
moment had arrived for asserting our liberty, I, who 
had belonged to no secret society, nor had had any- 
thing to do with promoting the excitement, declared 
my sympathy with the liberals, and was delegated 



124 JOURNEY TO BOLOGNA. 

by them to warn the apostolic legate that he was 
about to be deprived of all power, moral and physical, 
but that his person would be untouched. He cour- 
teously expressed his obligations to me ; but when, 
at the end of our twenty-six days of happiness, he 
was re-established, I found that my name was placed 
at the head of the black-list. I was deprived of all 
the public trusts I held, and I have been ever since 
so closely watched that I am but a prisoner. I can- 
not cross the frontier within ten miles of Ferrara, nor 
even go to Rome without a special permission from 
the secretary of state, which can only be procured 
by stating that I am going on professional business, 
and shall be in such and such houses, see such and 
such people, and be absent such a number of days." 
This is the condition of the best subjects of a gov- 
ernment of which the head is also the head of the 
greatest body of Christians in the world. Oh ! my 
countrymen, thank God for your religious and civil 
freedom, and cherish it ! 



Bologna. — We had nothing notable during our 
dreary, cloudy drive to Bologna, but a rencounter 
with the beggars at our last post-station. As usual, 
beggars of all ages, from first to second childhood, 
flocked around our carriage. We had given away 
all our sous, and we had recourse to our lunch-bas- 
ket. I arranged the bread and chicken, and L. dis- 
pensed. " Oh ! give me a bit," she said, " for this 
boy with heavenly eyes !" " Here it is ; now give 



BOLOGNA. 125 

this to that blind old woman." " Oh ! I must give 
this to that little Tot who is stretching up her arm 
to me ; what a perfect cherub she would be if her 
face was washed ! keep off, you snatcher !" to a lean, 
tall half idiot who was intercepting the cherub's 
slice. " Now, L., this must go to that sick, shivering 
old man !" " Oh ! wait, see this poor, pale girl." 
" Now for the old woman !" but the bit went to a 
trembling boy who looked like a leper, with a with- 
ered arm ; and when my old woman was at last sup- 
plied, there was an evil-eyed hag and four boys who 
jostled the first comers away, and tw T o of them, after 
devouring, like hungry dogs, what we gave them, 
followed us half a mile, calling " ca-ri-ta !" Beside 
the dramatis personse I have described, and who 
were actually en scene, we saw T , as we drove off, oth- 
ers, lame and blind, coming from their more distant 
stations towards us. 

You must attribute some portion of the barrenness 
of my travelling journal, my dear C, to the bad 
weather that, almost without exception, has attend- 
ed us in our passages from place to place since we 
entered Italy. The advanced season, too, is against 
us. All rural occupation is suspended ; the vintage 
is past, the corn is husbanded, and the country has 
now T (November 26) as bare an aspect as it ever 
has in Italy. Bologna, as you first see it, lying un- 
der the shadow of the Apennines, with its antique 
spires and leaning towers, is a most picturesque town ; 
but all is picturesque in Italy, down to the laden ass 
and the beggar. From the villas and villages that 

L2 



126 BOLOGNA. 

surround the town, you may imagine how rich and 
smiling the suburbs must be in any but this desolate 
season. As we drove through the streets we were 
struck with the long lines of arcades and columns 
that front all the edifices, and which afford a perfect 
protection to the foot-passenger. They were de- 
signed, I think, by the luxurious citizens, when the 
sumptuary laws of the republic forbade the use of 
covered carriages. There is an arcade of 640 arches 
extending from the town to a church of the Madon- 
na, on a hill three miles from the city. Truly the 
church has kept itself free of sumptuary laws. 



The Piazzo del Gigante, to which I have just 
walked in a pouring rain, is one of the most charac- 
teristic and grandest monuments of the Italian re- 
publics that we have yet seen in Italy. With the 
fountain of Neptune, the master-piece of John of 
Bologna, in the centre, it is surrounded by churches, 
superb old palaces, towers, and other buildings with 
the most curious Gothic fronts. 



The " Academy of the Fine Arts" here contains 
one of the best galleries of pictures in the world. 
They are the master-pieces of the first masters, and 
what masters they were! I feel now more than 
ever what nonsense it is to write about these pic- 
tures, since, with all I have read about them, I find I 
had no conception of their power — none worth having 
of the painter's divine art. 



BOLOGNA. 127 

I make it a rule, in these galleries, not to go bewil- 
dering myself about from room to room, but to con- 
fine my attention to the best pictures; and I have 
adhered to my rule to-day, hardly glancing even at 
the pictures of the three Caracci, all natives of Bo- 
logna. 

There is a painted tragedy here by Guido that 
would break your heart : " The murder of the In- 
nocents." The trustfulness of the lovely children, 
who feel themselves safe in the close embrace 
of the mother, contrasted with her terror and an- 
guish, is most touching. But the most affecting fig- 
ure is a mother with her hands clasped and her two 
dead children at her feet. It is all over with her ; 
she has nothing farther to hope or fear, and the res- 
ignation of the saint is struggling with the despair 
of the parent. You want to throw yourself at her 
feet and weep with her. 

The martyrdom of St. Agnes by Domenichino, 
with its glorious golden light, is a picture that even 
dear J., with all her horror of representations of 
physical suffering, could not turn away from ; there 
is such sweet peace on the face of the young woman. 
Art could not better illustrate that true and beauti- 
ful declaration of the prophet, " The work of righ- 
teousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteous- 
ness quietness and assurance forever." The execu- 
tioner grasps her bright, wavy hair with one hand, 
while with hot pincers in the other he is burning out 
the flesh of her throat and bosom. The besotted 
judge looks on, and cherubs are floating over the 



128 BOLOGNA. 

naissant saint, one holding the crown of martyrdom, 
and another a pen to record her triumphs. I pass 
over Guidons " Madonna della Pieta" the " Rosario" 
and even that imbodiment of perfect grace and 
beauty, Raphael's " St. Cecilia" (their names thrill 
those who have seen them!), for Guido's "Cru- 
cifixion," which, like the very scene, fills you with 
solemnity and awe. There are but four figures, 
and they are as large as life; that of Jesus ex- 
presses " It is finished !" Mary is not, as in most 
of her pictures, to the gross violation of truth, rep- 
resented young, but in the unimpaired ripeness of 
womanhood. She has the same face, dress, and at- 
titude as in the Pieta, but there she divides your 
attention with the admirable portraits of the four 
adoring saints; there Scripture truth and simplicity 
are sacrificed to a fable or an imagination of the 
church ; here you see the real Mary, and the un- 
fathomable depths of her sorrow show the prophecy- 
accomplished : " the sword has pierced her soul." 
John, standing on the other side the cross, is the 
personification of gentleness and tenderness worthy 
that highest trust of his master, "Woman, behold 
thy son !" The only imperfection that struck me in 
the picture is a want of a right expression in Mary 
Magdalene. She is a beautiful, sorrowing young 
girl kneeling at the foot of the cross, and pressing 
her brow against it, but she is not the forgiven pen- 
itent. Surely the reformers forgot that nine tenths of 
mankind receive their strongest impressions through 
their senses, when they excluded such glorious pre- 



BOLOGNA. 129 

sentments of Divine truth from their churches. I 
should have but a poor opinion of him whose devo- 
tion was not warmed by Guido's Crucifixion. 

A masterly head of an old man arrested my at- 
tention. I examined my catalogue, and found it 
was painted by Guercino in a single night, and was 
called " the head of the Eternal Father !" The at- 
tempt is as futile as profane to represent Him whom 
" no man can see, and live." 

While enjoying these sublime works of art as a 
new revelation, we were hurried away to see some- 
thing else that must be seen now or never. The 
Campo Santo, being the most beautiful thing of its 
kind in Italy, we could not overlook ; accordingly 
we drove there. This was formerly a chartreuse — 
an immense monastic establishment ; once the dreary 
habitation of the living, who suffered in its magnif- 
icent solitude, now the beautiful abode of the dead, 
who cannot enjoy it. Such are the perversions of 
human things ! The cemetery at Ferrara dwindled 
to insignificance compared with this. I can give 
you no idea of the immense perspective of its clois- 
ters, all lined with tablets, and monuments, and 
fresco paintings, or of the almost infinite series of 
cells, converted into family tombs by the exclu- 
sives of Bologna. These open from the cloisters 
and are so arranged as to produce a most picturesque 
architectural effect. " The million" are laid in four 
large, open courts in classes, one for men, one for 
women, one for boys, and another for girls. There 
seemed to me in this a cold neglect of the law of 



130 BOLOGNA. 

family love, that governs all mankind. There are 
some splendid public monuments, and a pantheon is 
building for the illustrious of Bologna, and in the 
mean time there is a large apartment filled with 
their busts. I noticed a very fine one of a woman 
who was professor of Greek in the University of 
Bologna within the present century.* 

Immense as the establishment is, large additions 
are making. " You mean to have room for all Bo- 
logna," I said to our conductor. " Oui, madame, 
tout le monde entre et personne en fort. C'est pour 
quoi il faut toujours batir" (" All come in and none 
go out. So we have to keep on building"). 



It has been our great pleasure to meet Miss 

here. You can hardly imagine the delight, after 
being exclusively among foreign people, of meeting 
a high-bred Englishwoman who is not foreign to us. 

She sang for us, and truly, as Mrs. said of 

her, she does not sing like an angel, but "like a 
choir of angels." Music is the key that unlocks 

* It is said that Italy has produced more learned women than any 
part of Europe, and that Bologna has longest continued to respect 
and reward the literary acquisitions of women. It was a lady of 
Bologna who, in the fifteenth century, was so zealous a champion 
of her sex as to employ her wit and learning to prove the world has 
been all this while in error, and that it was Adam who tempted Eve. 
It is curious that the most illustrious examples of learned women 
should spring up in a country where they are condemned, en masse, 
to ignorance ; where a conventual education prescribes religion as 
their only duty, and their instincts cherish love as their only happi- 
ness. 



FILLAGARE. 131 

her soul and brings its rich revelations to her face. 
She looks, while singing, like an inspired sibyl. 
We went to the opera with her, where we saw, 
for the first time, a decent ballet. The house is 
very pretty. There are balconies projecting from 
the loges, which show off the audience and give the 
house a lively aspect unusual in the Italian theatres. 
Nov. 28. — A wretched morning, and the rain 
pouring, my dear C. j but our letters are at Flor- 
ence, and there must we be — so ho! for the Apen- 
nines. 



Fillagare. — As we drove out of Bologna I had a 
melancholy sense of the ludicrous insufficiency of 
two rainy days in a place where we might have 
been employed for six months in studying the al- 
most unimpaired records of its days of power and 
magnificence. In spite of the pouring rain, we en- 
joyed the environs of Bologna. They are richly em- 
bellished. 

At our second post we took a third pair of horses, 
and at the first ascent a yoke of oxen in addition, 
and then began a slow drag up the Apennines, 
which we continued till six this evening, with the 
exception of a race down the hills as fearless and 
careless as the driving in our own country. This is 
a new experience ; for, till now, the caution of our 
postillions has gone even a little beyond my cow- 
ardly notions of prudence. 

The Apennines are a congregation of hills ; those 



132 FILLAGARE. 

we have, passed to-day are much higher, but not un- 
like, in their formation, the hills between Berkshire 
and Hampshire, though, judging from their produc- 
tions, very unlike in their climate. Here are fine fields 
of well-started winter-grain, and occasional planta- 
tions of grapes flung from tree to tree. Once the misty 
atmosphere cleared, and we got a peep of the Adri- 
atic and the Alps. We have been all day thinking 
of you. It is " Thanksgiving Day ;" and our position 
in a huge, lonely inn in the midst of the Apennines, 
with a salon over a stable, is a sorry contrast to 
your sweet savours and social pleasures round the 
hearth of our childhood ! We have entered Tuscany, 
and I fancy I can see the spirit of this most fortunate 
land of Italy in our buxom, frank, good-humoured 
hostess and her beautiful progeny, with their black 
eyes and golden skins. We have been talking with 
the eldest, Candida and Clementina, and petting 
the youngest, Giulio and Angiolino ! " a pretty Ital- 
ianizing of Tom and Sam," K. says. I like, of 
all things, to stop at these inns which are not the 
regular stopping-places. The people are social and 
frank, and you get some insight into the national 
modes of getting on. You will find no teacups and 
no tea (but that first of necessaries you always have 
with you), and you have a droll medley for your 
table-service ; and, instead of a dandy waiter with 
his meager French, and his " subito signora," and 
his action never suited to the word, you have all 
the family to serve you, with their amusing individ- 
ualities, and all eager and indefatigable. 



JOURNEY TO FLORENCE. 133 

We left our shelter at Fillagare at nine this 
morning. We are often wondering at the com- 
plaints we have heard of the impositions in Italy. 
We had excellent bread and delicious butter from 
the cascina (the duke's dairy) with our tea, and 
fresh eggs in the morning, generous un-Italian fires 
in two rooms, and a pair of chickens for to-day's 
lunch, all for one dollar each ; and being an inn 
where travellers seldom stop, they had the tempta- 
tion to pluck well the goose that is rarely caught. 

I walked on in advance of the carriage this morn- 
ing, and a heavy, impenetrable mist came scudding 
over the hills in one direction, and far, far away in 
another the light streamed down in a silvery shower, 
in which the old faith of the land would have en- 
veloped a descending Divinity. I was amid scenery 
so wild and solitary that it recalled my earliest 
ideas of Italy got from Mrs. RatclinVs romances, 
when I was suddenly awakened from a revery to 
an uncomfortable consciousness of my isolation and 
helplessness by the apparition of a savage-looking 
wretch clothed in sheep-skins. He, however, betook 
himself to the reliable occupation of tending his 
sheep. Soon after an ass-rider overtook me, and I 
tried to keep pace with his beast, thinking that he 
was a safeguard who possessed even so much prop- 
erty as an ass, but the brute ambled away from me ; 
and while I paused, hesitating whether to proceed 
or turn towards the carriage, I perceived a ragged, 
wild-looking man in an adjoining field, who eyed me 

Vol. IL— M 



134 JOURNEY TO FLORENCE. 

for an instant, and then came rapidly towards me. 
I hesitated no longer, but turned and walked quick- 
ly down the hill, seeing, as I looked askance at my 
pursuer, that he gained on me. " Oh," thought I, 
" what a fool I was, when Francois told me yester- 
day this was no country for a lady to walk alone 
in, to try it a second time !" Like the Irishman, I 
thought all the world might hear the singing in my 
ears, when, to my unspeakable relief, our great ma- 
chine, with its attelage of six horses, appeared 
in sight. Oh, how brave I felt as I again turned 
and eyed my enemy, who immediately retreated, 
giving me thus some colour of reason to believe that 
I had been on the verge of an incident very rare 
of late years. It is surprising to me, with the 
temptations of booty which the rich English travel- 
lers offer, the urgency of the people's wants, and the 
favourable positions occurring on the great thorough- 
fares, that robberies are not frequent in Italy. 

The wind blew furiously to-day on the summits of 
the Apennines. These gusts of wind, as M. read to 
us from our guide-book (at the moment it seemed to 
be swelling to a hurricane), formerly carried away 
carriages, travellers, and all ; but now all danger of 
such a catastrophe is obviated by stone walls erected 
for protection by the " paternal grand-duke." 

At our fourth post all wildness and sterility disap- 
peared, and we came down upon declivities with 
large tracts of rich pasturage, where herds of cattle 
and flocks of sheep were grazing, and a little lower 
down appeared plantations of vines and olives. As 



FLORENCE. 135 

we approached this most beautiful city of Florence, 
the hills, even at this sear season, appear like terraced 
gardens, and, as we came down the last long descent 
with the valley of the Arno at our feet, and fair 
Florence with its spires and domes before us, we 
seemed to have passed into another world. The 
olive-tree resembles our ordinary-sized willow in its 
shape and in the hue of its foliage. Some person 
has happily said that " it looks as if it grew in moon- 
light ;" an idea exquisitely transfused into poetry by 
Kenyon in his address to his " sphered vestal !" 

" Or adding yet a paler pensiveness 
To the pale olive-tree." 

The olive lives to such an age that the peasant be- 
lieves the oldest were planted in the time of our 
Saviour. The bearing-limbs are continually renew- 
ed by trimming, but the main stems are apparently 
sapless, and so decayed and hollow that you won- 
der how the juices can be kept in circulation. And 
yet they are in full bearing in the most steril places, 
where, as our friend K — n said too poetically in prose, 
" they pump oil from the rocks." 

We are settled for a week at the Scheiderff hotel 
on the Arno, formerly one of the palaces of the 
Medici. This, I fancy, is the season when most 
English are to be found in Florence. It seems like 
an English colony. The coaches in the streets are 
English, with English ladies and English liveries. 
The shops are thronged with English, and the galle- 
ries filled with them* 
* I have omitted my first delightful impressions of Florence. We 



136 SIENNA. 

Vienna, December 8. 
My DEAR C.j 

We arrived here last evening just at the moment of 
the only Italian sunset we have seen to be compared 
with our brilliant sunsets. The golden and crimson 
rays reminded me of home, but how different from 
anything at home the Gothic structures and towers 
that reflected them. Our drive yesterday was through 
as lovely a country as can be imagined ; broken into 
steep, high hills, whose declivities of every form are 
enriched by the highest cultivation, which shows, even 
now, what a garden Tuscany is ; that here " Nature 
makes her happy home with man." There seems 
to be a fitness and harmony between the ground and 
its tillers. We have seen nowhere so handsome and 
attractive a peasantry. They have bright cheeks 
and bright eyes, and the most graceful cheerfulness. 
The animals, too, seem the fit offspring of this their 
bountiful mother-earth. The oxen are mouse-col- 
oured, large, fat, and beautifully formed. 

When we arrived at the inn we found that all the 
apartments au premier were held in reserve for an 
expected "milor Anglais" (all the English on the 
Continent are " my lords") ; so we are obliged to 
put up with a little saloon without a fire, and to 
hover round a smoky chimney in R.'s bedroom.* 

returned to it at a pleasanter season, when my records were more 
particular and may prove more interesting. At any rate, I shall avoid 
the tediousness of repetition. 

* I once asked an English friend, who, I thought, was sufficiently 
a philosopher to endure and perhaps to solve the question, "how it 



SIENNA. 137 

As we have been looking forward to a pleasant 
Sunday here, you must forgive my grumbling. We 
fully realize the happiness of travelling in a large 
party when we assemble, a little Christian congre- 
gation, for our mass. That being over this morn- 
ing, we sallied forth to the Cathedral, old and 
grand, rich without and within. It has a rare mosaic 
pavement of black and white marble, representing 
Scripture history, and events and characters of the 
Catholic Church, in a masterly style, by a mere out- 
happens that the English are so much disliked on the Continent." 
" How can it be otherwise," he replied, " when they occupy the best 
apartments, ride in the best carriages, use the best horses, and, in 
short, forestal the natives in everything?" And when to this po- 
tentiality is added the Englishman's shyness and pride, his island in- 
aptitude at adaptation, his exclusiveness, from principle, taste, and 
habit, and the consciousness of indisputable superiority that he man- 
ifests in all parts of the world, thus everywhere running afoul of 
other people's self-loves, national pride, and, I may add, just self- 
estimation, it is very explicable why he is the subject of general dis- 
like. It is a pity he should thus lose the benefit of his wide-spread 
benefactions. It is the Englishman who keeps alive and astir the 
needy population of these old cities. It is he who builds the hotels, 
who sets the wheels in motion on the roads, who makes a beaten 
path to the temples of old art however secluded, and to the everlast- 
ing temples of Nature however difficult of access. But this all goes 
for nothing so long as he maintains his national demeanour, and (as 
an Italian gentleman said to a friend of mine) " comes down into 
Italy as if he were at the head of a victorious army !" 

The American travellers being as yet but a handful in comparison 
with the English, and speaking the same language, are merged in 
them. If not English, why then, they say, " you are English Amer- 
icans." But the moment they become fully aware that you belong 
to a separate and independent nation, they open their hearts, and 
pour out a flood of griefs against the English. As we are a young 
nation we should be flexible, and avoid the foibles of the parent 
stock. 

M2 



138 SIENNA. 

lining. It bears a very curious resemblance to 
Retzch's etchings. There are frescoes in the sacris- 
ty, designed by Raphael, in which there are three 
portraits of himself ; if not en peintre idealized, he 
must have had an outer fitting his inner man. In 
this same sacristy are twenty-five volumes of church 
music, illustrated by Benedictine monks in the fif- 
teenth century, in colours as vivid as the rainbow, 
and with the most elaborate finish. For the rest (I 
adopt a great authority) " vide Guide-book," which 
guide-book sent us off in search of the Fonte-Blan- 
da, to which Dante, by a simple mention, has given 
an " immortal youth." So up we mounted and down 
we strode through a street that no carriage could 
pass ; and at the foot of it, and at the gate of the 
city, we found the fountain. Sienna is celebrated 
for the purity and abundance of its water. Here it 
flows through several pipes and by grotesque mouths 
into an immense basin, which is covered with a 
stone-vaulted roof of three arches ; and, hanging 
over this, on the verge of a perpendicular hill, is a 
large church dedicated to St. Catharine. It is a 
most picturesque place ; but what is not picturesque 
in Italy 1 The old hags I saw skinning lambs, as 
we again mounted the steep hill, were subjects for 
Michael Angelo. If these old women had been 
born in New-England, they would as soon have 
flayed themselves as flayed lambs in the street of a 
Sunday. So much for conventional virtue ! It was 
festa-day in Sienna, and these secular employments 
were a curious episode enough in the general 



JOURNEY TO RADICOFANE. 139 

" idlesse" and gayety of the streets. It was St. 
Catharine's festa, too, being her natal day, and we 
were passing by a little chapel, built on the site of 
the very house in which she was born ; so we pushed 
aside the curtain to the door and turned into it, ex- 
pecting to find it crowded ; but she whom the paint- 
ers more effectually than the church have canonized, 
has met with the common fate, and has little honour 
in her own country — or her own chapel. There 
were some twenty children kneeling about the door, 
who suspended their prayers to stare at us ; and the 
young priests who were going in and out, 1 inferred 
from the direction of their eyes, thought less of the 
saint than of the blooming young heretics who were 
with me. 



Radicofane. — We were up betimes this morning, 
and before seven drove from the little piazza, with 
its antique column surmounted with the nursing 
mother of Romulus and Remus, and her human cubs. 
We were but a few miles from Sienna when I dis- 
covered that I had left my shawl and mantilla at 
the head of my bed, where I had placed them to 
raise my scant pillow. I sent back a line from the 
next post, but, I take it, there is little hope in Italy 
of retrieving such a loss. If the master of the ho- 
tel chances to be honest, the cameriera will be too 
quick for him * 

* I have transferred the above from my journal, and am willing to 
bear the shame of it, if, by recording the issue, I may save others 



140 RADICOFANE. 

As we have proceeded on our journey to-day the 
country has become sterile and beggars multiply. 
We have been followed up and down hill by a tail 
of little beggars clothed in a mass of ragged patch- 
es ; yet their beauty, with a certain grace and re- 
finement in their expressions, went to my heart. 
They are not beggars " by theirs or their parents' 
fault;" and when their little hands were stretched 
out for " carita" I longed to take them and lead 
them to my free, unoccupied country ; and they 
were quite as kindly disposed to us, promising us 
for our few halfpence the protection of all the saints, 
the company of " Maria Santissima," and, to crown 
all, access to Paradise ! 

K. asked a boy of twelve years, who wore a cot- 
ton jacket and trousers (December 9, two thousand 
four hundred and seventy feet above the Mediterra- 
nean), and manifestly no under-clothes, " if he knew 
where America was?" "No; nor England, nor 
Rome, nor Florence !" Another, still older, had 
heard of Rome, but he had been four years to school ! 
" His mother was dead, and there was no one to pay 
for him, and give him bread any longer ; and," he 
concluded, " there is no work — ah, signorina, questo 
paese e molto povero — molto miserable !" 

from such sweeping and unfair judgments. My property was sent 
after me to Rome by vetturino, with a very civil note from our host 
of the Aquila Nera ; the man who brought it merely required a re- 
ceipt for it, and persisted in refusing a reward for his service. This 
would have been a rare instance of disinterested civility in America, 
and singular in England ; but still Americans and English go on vi- 
tuperating Italian cupidity ! 



RADICOFANE. 141 

Poor and miserable indeed ! It consists of a 
range of volcanic hills without soil, excepting here 
and there enough to sustain pasturage for a few 
sheep. We are on one of the highest, dreariest 
summits, and are now, just as the evening is closing, 
sitting in the huge balcony of our barrack-like inn. 
I will sketch the scene before us for you. No ; we 
are not quite at the summit, for that is crowned 
with a ruined fortress, and cowering under its 
walls is a wretched village, between which and our 
inn the road passes. Before our door is an old 
stone fountain with the armorial bearings of some 
forgotten family. From the fountain there is a 
straight, steep path to the village above. Ascend- 
ing this path are asses with immense bundles of fire- 
wood on each side (a family's winter supply proba- 
bly), consisting of mere twigs and withs. There 
are priests, too (the only people here, Francois says, 
who don't work and do eat), with their gowns and 
three-cornered hats, dawdling up the path. And 
there, driving their scanty flock to the fold, goes a 
shepherd and shepherdess, and their little girl, look- 
ing lean and wearied, their windowed ragged- 
ness half hidden with dark red mantles (here the 
shepherd's costume), which hang to the ground be- 
hind. Round the fountain are gathered ass-drivers 
drinking with their asses, and beside them is an old 
hag, who, having just espied us, has pressed her fin- 
gers on the sightless eyeballs of a child beside her, 
and then wildly stretched her arms towards us, is 
crying " carita !" 



142 JOURNEY TO VITERBO. 



I- 



In the street under us is a smart English travel- 
ling-carriage waiting for a change of horses. The 
courier is sauntering round it, and my lady's maid 
is in the rumble; a gentleman is standing beside 
the open door, a very pretty young woman is in 
the carriage with three pet-dogs. The little rag- 
ged escort that followed us up the hill have sur- 
rounded the carriage, reinforced by some half dozen 
blind and maimed old creatures whom the sound of 
wheels has brought down from the village. The 
lady is caressing her pets, feeding them with raisins 
and biscuits, as well as I can see j she gives no heed 
to the beggars' clatter — yes, she is tired of it — -she 
asks the gentleman to get in, and they coolly close 
the windows. I don't know what my poor little 
beggarly friends think, but this turning aside from hu- 
man necessities to pamper brutes seems to me one 
of those " fantastic tricks at which the angels weep." 
My dear C, you may say " something too much 
of this ;" but beggary here, remember, makes up a 
good portion of the history of the country, or, rather, 
a running commentary on the neglect and abuses of 
its governments.* 



Viterbo. — We left that wild place up in the clouds 
this morning with only just light enough to see our 

* No one born and bred in Europe can well imagine how striking 
the want and beggary of the Old World is to an American eye. 1 
must be forgiven for a tedious recurrence to it ; I could not other- 
wise fairly give my impressions. 



VITERBO. 143 

winding way. We again entered the papal terri- 
tory at the end of our first post, and we find increas- 
ing wretchedness, and our own wretched condition 
in bad roads, puny horses, ragged harness, and in- 
competent postillions, all betokening his holiness' 
dominion. We passed to-day through Bolsena, now 
a miserable little town, but once an ancient Etrus- 
can capital, whence the Romans are said to have 
removed 2000 statues ! " The world is a stage," and 
the scenes, with but a little longer interval of time, 
as shifting as the scenes of a theatre. 



I wish you could have seen us, dear C, an hour 
ago, escorted about by two little fellows, ragged and 
beautiful, who would fain have persuaded us to go 
to the Church of Santa Rosa to see the saint's body, 
which is exhibited in her own church. But though 
our conductors reiterated in most persuasive tones 
"e una bella Santa — Santa Rosa," we persisted in 
leaving the vilely dirty streets of Viterbo for the 
suburbs, where we had a delightful stroll to a chapel 
of St. Francis', which we entered just as a proces- 
sion of Franciscans went in to their vesper-service. 
Our little guides dropped on their knees and joined 
in the service ; and so did we in our hearts. How 
skilfully the Catholics have made many of the offi- 
ces of their religion to harmonize with the wants 
and spontaneous feelings of man. A vesper-service 
is the very poetry of worship. 



144 VITERBO. 

On our return our cicerone, without warning us, 
knocked at the door of a house, into which we were 
admitted by an old crone who, on the boys saying 
something to her in a low-toned patois, conducted 
us through a suite of apartments, and passed us over 
to the " Padroni." He led us out into a garden, and 
told us this had been Madame Letitia's, and was still 
in the possession of the Bonaparte family. I fancied 
this was a mere invention to filch us of a few pauls ; 
so I was grudgingly offering the fee when the gen- 
tleman, with a very dignified bow and a " grazie," 
declined it, and turned away to pluck us bouquets of 
roses and geraniums. It was now my turn to say 
" grazie," and to feel as if I had been guilty of a 
meanness quite equal to that which, with a true trav- 
eller's prejudice, I had gratuitously imputed to the 
Italian gentleman. 

It is difficult for us to imagine that this little town, 
which now contains about 13,000 inhabitants (not so 
many as some of our western towns accumulate in 
three or four years' growth), has been standing ever 
since the time of the Etruscans, was a celebrated 
place in their day, and has since often been a papal 
residence ; but these Old World towns have, as an 
Irishman might say, a growth two ways. 



We left Viterbo at seven this morning, little think- 
ing of what dread moment to one human being was 
the instant of our departure. We started with six 



JOURNEY TO ROME. 145 

horses, and, according to the laws of posting in the 
pope's dominions, with a postillion to each span of 
horses. They were all young men, one a boy of 
thirteen, and all impetuous and noisy, beyond what 
you can well conceive, never having heard the clam- 
our of Italian postboys. There were two carriages 
ready to start at the inn-door. Francois, anxious to 
have the advantage of precedence on the road, urged 
our postillions, who needed no urging, and we set 
off at a gallop down the steep street of Viterbo and 
into the market-place crowded with people. I shud- 
dered as I saw them jumping on one side and the 
other to avoid us. I called to Francois to check our 
speed ; he did not hear me, and on we dashed, turned 
a corner, and a moment after we felt a slight jolt of 
the carriage as if it were passing over something, 
and a momentary check of the horses, and heard 
cries and exclamations, and again the postillions' 
clamour burst forth, and the horses were put to their 
speed. I thrust my head out of the window, and 
saw the girls in the rumble as pale as death; K. 
bent forward and said, " We have run over a wom- 
an. I called to Francois and the postillions to stop ; 
they did not hear me ; say nothing in the carriage ; 
it will do no good to stop now." The postillions 
were still urging their horses, we were actually ra- 
cing up hill, the scene of the tragedy w T as already 
far behind, and fearing, as K. did, to shock her un- 
cle by communicating the disaster, I submitted to 
the apparent barbarity of galloping away, unheeding 
the misery we had inflicted. A half hour afterward 
Vol. II.— N 



146 JOURNEY TO ROME. 

a courier who passed us on horseback called out, 
" e morta !" (" she is dead !") It has been a gloomy 
day to us. 

Nothing could exceed the dismay and dread in 
the faces of the young postillions when we stopped 
at the post-house, except the boy, who, being the son 
of the postmaster, was sure of acquittal, and bore 
with perfect unconcern all the blame which his com- 
rades heaped upon him, imputing the disaster to his 
unskilfulness in not turning aside his horses. Fran- 
cois confirmed their statement, and K., at their ear- 
nest supplication, wrote as mitigatory a statement 
for them as the case admitted, to be presented to the 
police of Viterbo. Francois tells us now that she will 
be recalled to Viterbo as a witness, and congratulates 
himself on his superior wariness in not putting his 
name to the testimonial. " Miss K.," he says, coolly, 
" did not think." " No, Francois ; but, if she had, 
she could not have refused to do justice to those 
men because she exposed herself to inconvenience." 
"Ah, madame, one must take care for one's self 
first!"* 

* We went through the usual transitions, being first incensed at 
the postillions, and then, when we felt the misery of exchanging the 
free gallop over hill and dale for a prison in Viterbo, itself a prison, 
with the curses of all the town, and the horror of having sent a fel- 
low-creature "unanointed, unannealed," to purgatory, we pitied them. 
Fran<jois afterward recognised one of them at Rome, who told him 
he had got off with a few weeks' imprisonment. " Was the wom- 
an young?" asked Francois. "So-so." "Had she a husband?" 
" Yes." " Did you not fear he would stab you ?" " At first, yes ; 
but he was a sensible fellow, he thanked me, and offered to treat me 
to a dinner'" ( 



JOURNEY TO ROME. 147 

Our last posts were through the dreary wastes 
that encompass Rome. The campagna is not, as I 
had ignorantly believed, a level, but presents an un- 
dulating surface, without morasses or stagnant wa- 
ter, or anything that indicates unwholesomeness ex- 
cept its utter desertion. The grass looks rich and 
rank, as if it sprung from a virgin soil, and its tints 
are glowing, even at this season. There are scat- 
tered here and there large flocks of sheep, with lean, 
haggard, and half-clothed shepherds, and shepherd's 
dogs ; and there are herds of oxen of a very large 
and fine species, and with horns as beautiful as ant- 
lers. But, with these exceptions, there is no life. 
From the summits of the hills, and there are consid- 
erable hills, the eye stretches over a wide reach of 
country, extending for miles in every direction, and 
here and there an old barrack-like dwelling, a 
crumbling tower, a shrine, or a crucifix ; but no 
cheerful habitations, no curling smoke, no domestic 
sounds, nothing that indicates human life and " coun- 
try contentments." It is one vast desolation ; a fit 
surrounding for the tomb of nations. As we caught 
the view of Sl^ Peter's, and the domes and spires of 
the three hundred and sixty churches of Rome, it 
seemed as if life were still beating at the heart of 
the body doomed to die first at the extremities. 

You may expect to know my sensations on first 
seeing Rome. I cannot tell them, my dear C. I do 
not myself know what they were. I forgot myself. 

Two miles from Rome we passed the Tiber, on 



148 ROME. 

the Ponte Molle, the place where Constantine saw 
the vision of the cross ! and, after passing this, the 
aspect of the country changes, and immediately 
around the walls of Rome there is a belt of villas 
and gardens, a little discordant with what has pre- 
ceded, like gayly-dressed people in a funeral train. 
The city, as we entered it at the Piazza del Popolo,* 
has the gay aspect of a modern capital, with its 
fountain, statues, churches, and uniform modern edi- 
fices ; but there are certain antiques, like the Egyp- 
tian obelisk, covered with hieroglyphics, which re- 
semble heirlooms in the house of gay young people 
who have just set up housekeeping. We had plenty 
of time for observation, while Francois was trying 
to soften the officials. But their hearts were too 
hard for his rhetoric, and so we drove to the Dogana 
through the Corso, the principal street in Rome, 
long and narrow, looking, I fancy, as we proceeded 
at a foot-pace, with a soldier on each side, like cap- 
tured contrabandists. The Corso was full of gay 
equipages, filled with English people, and lined, for 
the most part, with mean shops, with mean, every- 
day commodities ; such shops and such " goods" as 
you would see in the " Main-street" of Hudson, or in 
any other second-rate town. We had no feeling of 
'Rome till we arrived at the custom-house, and saw 
there some witnesses for the old city, in a portico 
with superb antique Corinthian pillars. After a lit- 
tle fussy ceremony, a mere make-believe peep into 

* This place is said to derive its name, not from the people — they 
do not figure in these parts — but from an ancient grove of poplars. 



ROME. 149 

our baggage, and the payment of a few pauls for 
this gentle treatment, we were released, and are at 
this moment in comfortable apartments in the Hotel 
de Russie. We are in Rome ! We were beginning 
to think the deep-blue sky of Italy a traveller's sto- 
ry, but here it is. The evening is delicious ; there is 

" An ampler ether, a diviner air." 

Our apartments open on a terraced garden, and 
we have been walking in it amid orange and lem- 
on trees bent with fruit, and roses and flowering 
shrubs in bloom. Some of these, planted in vases, 
stand on fragments of antique sculptured pillars. I 
observed one on a colossal foot, chiselled, perhaps, 
by a Greek artist. At every turn there are statues, 
antiques too, patched as our grandmothers patched 
china — Greeks with modern Roman throats, toes 
and fingers pieced on ad libitum, and even a trunk 
with legs, arms, and head supplied. How the organ 
of veneration must thrive in Rome ! 



W. came to us immediately on our arrival. Could 
anything be more fortunate than our meeting him 
here where the girls most need the brother — friend 
he will be to them, and we all need the refreshment 
of his society and the comfort of his co-operation. 
K — n is here too for the winter ; so we have sud- 
denly come into possession of an independent for- 
tune ! W. has engaged our lodgings near Monte 
Cavallo, looking out on a green hill, the Viminal, 
with a garden adjoining in English occupancy, and, 

N2 



150 ROME. 

of course, in high cultivation, and, what is better 
than all the rest, with the sun shining on us from its 
rising to its setting. We pay twenty-three Louis, 
one hundred and one dollars, a month for our rooms ; 
all other expenses are a separate affair. This low 
price, as we are assured it is, is in consequence 
of our being far from the English (fashionable) 
quarter. But, as we have no acquaintances, that 
does not signify, and the acquaintances we wish to 
make, and daily visit, the Colosseum, the Forum, 
&c, are very near to us. The tribute which pil- 
grims from all parts of the world pay to these ruins 
is now the chief support of Rome. There are here 
every year from ten to twenty thousand strangers, 
many residents for the winters, and English people 
noted for the liberality of their expenditure. 

We have been to the Colosseum, not farther from 
us than your neighbour S — y is from you — not a 
quarter of a mile. Where it stands, apart from 
modern Rome, the ground is grass-grown and bro- 
ken into footpaths. You have seen a hundred pic- 
tures of it, read at least a hundred descriptions, and 
you know its dimensions,* and yet, my dear C, you 
cannot imagine its impression. I do not mean the 
impression of its unbroken circle ; of its gradation of 
Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders ; of the soft 
colour of its stone with its ages of weather-staining ; 
of the shrubs waving like banners from its lofty 
heights ; of the slender vines that penetrate its crev- 

* Its circumference is 1641 feet, its height 157. The length of the 
arena is 285 feet, and its breadth 182. 






ROME. 151 

ices, and hang out their flexile curtains; of its beds 
of glowing flowers, or of the mossy matting of its 
ruined stairs.* Now all this is form and colouring, 
which here, as elsewhere, holds discourse with the 
senses. But it is that, while standing under the 
shadow of this mighty ruin, you first fully realize 
that you are in Rome — ancient Rome ; that you are 
treading the ground Caesar, Cicero, and Brutus trod, 
and seeing what they saw ; that this is the scene of 
the magnificent crimes and great deeds that fill the 
blackest and brightest pages in the Old World's 
story. Under your foot is a remnant of the massive 
pavement on which the triumphal procession trod ; 
before you is the Via Sacra, the Roman Forum, the 
broken temples of the gods, the Palatine Hill, the 
ruins of the Caesars' palaces, the arches of Constan- 
tine and Titus, and the Flavian amphitheatre, the 
Niagara of ruins ! 

" The heart runs o'er 
With silent worship of the great of old ; 
The dead but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule 
Our spirits from their urns." 

This is no poetic exaggeration. I am inclined to think 
Byron is the only person who can describe sensa- 
tions which people of far more common mould than 
his feel here. 

The Colosseum was built chiefly by the Jewish 
captives after the destruction of Jerusalem, and was 
dedicated by Titus with the slaughter of 5000 wild 

* A book has been written on the botany of the Colosseum, in 
which 260 species of plants are noted. 



152 ROME. 

beasts. It was devoted to gladiatorial contests, to 
the fight of captive men with captive beasts and 
with one another; subsequently it was the great 
arena where Christians furnished forth the dramatic 
show of being torn limb from limb for the entertain- 
ment of their fellow-men and women.* The gladia- 
torial games were celebrated here for the last time 
in the fifth century. Telemachus, a Christian who 
in vain had remonstrated against them, threw himself 
between the combatants, and was immediately killed 
by the enraged spectators. In consequence of this, 
the Emperor Honorius abolished the games, and the 
martyr became a saint. 

The structure remained entire until the eleventh 
century, when by a Roman noble it was converted 
into a fortress esteemed nearly impregnable. In 
1332 it was the scene of a bullfight. At the end 
of the fourteenth century it was converted into an 
hospital. In the fifteenth a portion of its mar- 
ble was burned into lime. In the sixteenth century 
it became the quarry from which the nobles of Rome 
constructed their palaces, and partisans of all par- 
ties their fortifications. In the seventeenth Sixtus 
V. attempted to establish a woollen manufactory 
here ! After all these vicissitudes, the papal au- 
thority was at last interposed to save this magnifi- 

* Those who take disheartening views of the progress of man 
should solace themselves with looking back in the world's histo- 
ry. What would now be thought of the autocrats of Austria and 
Russia (not men noted for hearts over-soft) if they were to furnish 
for their subjects the shows that amused the polished Romans? 
Has not Christianity done something for us ? 



ROME. 153 

cent relic of antiquity by Christian consecration. 
Benedict XIV. in the middle of the last century 
sanctified it, and erected a cross in the centre of the 
arena. 

Considerable reparations have been made from 
time to time, and are still making. The original el- 
evation is preserved entire but in one small segment 
of the circle, and there it appears stupendous. Its 
five rows of seats are in part still manifest. The 
seats of the first and second rows were cushioned, 
and the senators and those of consular rank occupied 
them. They ascended in position, and they descend- 
ed in rank, till they came to the poor women who 
were above and below all ! 

When I thought of the purpose to which this the- 
atre was devoted, I felt my impression of its sublim- 
ity abated by my consciousness of the degradation 
of humanity. My imagination called back from the 
dead the hundred thousand people who filled this 
vast circuit. I saw the Roman ladies looking down 
on the poor captives of the forest, and the human 
sacrifice ; and I wondered if, when they met in their 
passage through the vomitories, they talked of the 
ast new fashion, and tenderly inquired of the young 
mother " if her baby had yet cut a tooth !" That 
monster, " custom" does so harden the heart ! 



We have been to St. Peter's, and are not disap- 
pointed. The great works of nature and art al- 
ways surpassed my expectations. We walked in si- 



154 ROME. 






lence up and down the nave, made the circuit of the 
wall, stood under the glorious dome, and content- 
ed ourselves with the effect of its atmosphere with- 
out studying the details. The most beautiful object 
in approaching St. Peter's is certainly not itself; the 
dome is lost in this view, and the facade has neither 
grandeur nor harmony. Nor the colonnades with 
their row of statues, but the beautiful fountains, the 
very types of life, grace, and youth where every- 
thing else is fixed and heavy. 



Sunday. — We have been out of the Porta del 
Popolo to-day to attend service in the English chap- 
el. It is greatly to the honour of the pope that he 
permits the public worship of heretics here in the 
very heart of his dominion. This is better than the 
burning of the convent in our land of liberty of con- 
science and universal toleration ! There was a con- 
gregation of from six to seven hundred people, with- 
out any notable attraction in the officiating clergy- 
man. It is cheering to see the English, wherever 
they most congregate, maintaining the observances 
of their religion. We found at Wiesbaden, Frank- 
fort, Geneva, and here at Rome, a regular English 
service on Sunday; not a nominal thing, for the 
English, with very few exceptions, scrupulously at- 
tend it* 

* We rarely saw English people travelling on Sunday ; and as it 
involves no discredit, and to abstain from it often imposes disappoint- 
ment and discomfort, this indicates the steadfastness of their reli- 
gious principles. Captain Basil Hall's " Patchwork," just published, 



ROME. 155 

I had been walking about St. Peter's to-day till I 
felt the exaltation which the grandeur, the vast riches, 
and endless wonders of that glorious church produces, 
when I was suddenly attracted by the changing 
group around the bronze statue of St. Peter. This, 
formerly a statue of Jupiter, has been made by papal 
consecration the presiding divinity of .the Christian 
temple. It is a sitting figure, elevated a few feet 
from the floor, with a circlet round the head (now a 
glory), the left hand raised, and the right pressing a 
key to the breast. The rigid face has a cold, inflex- 
ible expression most unsuited to the impulsive dis- 
ciple. It looks like the idol it is ; and rather singu- 
larly in keeping with this expression is the right 
foot protruding from the drapery, condescendingly 
presented to the kiss of the faithful. 

I have often heard of the kissing of St. Peter's 
toe ; but, till I saw grown-up men and women ac- 
tually press their lips to this worn bronze toe, then 
rub their foreheads against it (a phrenological man- 
ifestation !), and finally kneel before the image, I had 
never fairly conceived of this idolatry; and yet, 
should we call it so ? Who shall analyze the feel- 
ing in which love and reverence blend ? a nicer art 
than to separate the ray of light ; who shall judge 

contains an interesting history of the steady efforts of the English at 
Rome, which resulted in the establishment of "a Protestant ceme- 
tery, a Church of England service, and a charitable fund dispensed 
at a Reformed altar to the subjects of the sovereign pontiff." God 
save the nation that binds to its altars its domestic ties and its char- 
ities. 



156 ROME. 

and condemn the impulses of devotion in an ignorant 
mind 1 I will not, but rather describe the scene I 
saw before this image to-day. Among the throng 
who came and went were two peasant-women, both 
in costume. Each had a child in her arms, one a 
boy about two years old, the other a girl somewhat 
younger. They were ragged, but I am accustomed 
to seeing these little, lost cherubs in rags ; and hap- 
pily, in preparation for a visit to the grand Basilica, 
they had undergone the rare ceremony of a washing ; 
and their brilliant eyes shone out from the unsullied 
golden ground of the Roman complexion — but gold- 
en or yellow hardly describes their peculiar tint of 
skin — Victor Hugo has done it well in poetry : 

" Ilsemble qu'il est dore du rayon du soleil." 

About this glowing complexion hung the richest 
curling hair of a glossy golden brown. The mother 
of the boy, after kissing the toe herself, put his lips 
to it. He submitted to the ceremony somewhat re- 
luctantly, faintly touching it with his lips, and giving 
his nose a brush across it. 

As he raised his head he saw the little girl whose 
mother was waiting for her turn, and half springing 
from his mother's arms, he kissed the child's round 
cheek of warm flesh and blood, and uttered a joyous 
chuckle at its contrast with the bronze toe that re- 
sounded through arch and aisle. It was a pretty 
triumph of nature ; a living picture in this land of 
pictures I* 

* I observed the decent-looking people among the faithful discreet- 
ly wiped the toe before kissing it, and Mr. G. told us that when his 



ROME. 157 

• 

December 30. — A most beautiful morning, my 
dear C. The sun has just risen above the Viminal 
Hill. I perceive a slight hoarfrost on the garden 
opposite to us. The leaves on the tall orange-tree 
by our window look slightly chilled ; and the poor 
women who are passing with their shawls close 
drawn over their heads shrink from the enemy as 
ours would if the mercury were ten degrees below 
zero. This is the first frost we have felt in Rome. 

We devoted yesterday morning to Crawford's and 
Thorwaldsen's studii. They present a striking con- 
trast of the toils, privations, and difficulties of the 
young and struggling genius, with the comfort, riches, 
and glory that wait on him who has won the day. 
Crawford is at this moment laid up, dangerously ill 
from overwork, and Thorwaldsen is making a visit in 
his native country which is little short of a triumphal 
progress. Sculptors, from the weight of their mate- 
rial, are compelled to work on the ground floor. 
Crawford's studio occupies three obscure, small, and 
sunless apartments, so cold and damp that they strike 
a chill through you. Here he has a few things fin- 
ished, and several spirited and beautiful models that 
are to be done into marble if he has orders for them. 
The sculptor labours under a disadvantage from the 
costliness of his material ; if he be poor he cannot 
put his design into marble till it is in part paid for. 
Our countrymen, not being practised in these mat- 
holiness does it this reverence, his attendants first spring forward and 
give it an effective rub with their cambric handkerchiefs. 

Vol. II.— 



158 ROME. 

ters, have not sufficiently considered this, and orders 
have been sometimes given with generous intentions, 
but with the mercantile idea of payment on delivery 
of the goods, which could not be executed for want 
of money to buy the block of marble. It is the 
English custom to pay half the price of the. work on 
giving the order. Among Crawford's designs is a 
very noble statue of Franklin. It is meant to illus- 
trate his discoveries in electricity ; he is looking up 
to the clouds with the calm assurance of conscious 
power. What an embellishment would this be for 
one of the Philadelphia squares ! Another design, 
which seemed to me to belong to the romantic school, 
is the rain of snakes described in the Apocalypse. 
The curse is falling on a family. The group inevi- 
tably reminds you of the Laocoon, and in one respect 
it seemed to me superior ; the parental instinct here 
triumphs over physical anguish. Crawford's last 
and most finished work is an Orpheus, which, as far 
as discovery has yet gone, has no prototype among 
the ancient sculptures. He has presented the rare 
husband at the moment of entering hell. Cerberus 
is lulled, and his heads are fallen in sleep ; the lyre is 
closely pressed under Orpheus's left arm, and his 
right hand shades his eyes, as if to concentrate the 
light on entering the dark region. The figure will, 
I believe, bear anatomical criticism ; it has the effect, 
at any rate, to an unscientific eye, of anatomical 
success. It is light, graceful, and spirited; a most 
expressive imbodying of poetic thought. There is 
the beauty of perfect symmetry in the face, with 






ROME. 159 

a shade of earnestness which, though unusual in 
classical models, does not at all impair its classical 
serenity. The young man is said to possess the 
courage and perseverance that is bone and muscle 
to genius ; if this be true, he is sure of success, and 
this cold, cheerless studio will, at some future time, 
be one of the Meccas of our countrymen.* 

We had some discussion last evening with our Eng- 
lish friend K — n on the character of American intel- 
lect, which ended in his confessing his surprise at what 
we are achieving. " I find," he said, " established 
here and at Florence three American artists (Green- 
ough, Powers, and Crawford). We have but three : 
Gibson, Wyatt, and M'Donald : and you have Mr. 
"Wilde at Florence, who has set himself down there 
to write the life of Dante, and is investigating his 
subject with the acuteness of a thoroughbred law- 
yer ; and here is Green, your consul, who, with frail 
health, has determined to devote twenty years to a 
history of Italy ! I told a friend the other day that 
we must put to whip and spur, or we should be dis- 
tanced." It is something new to hear our country 
admired for anything but cutting down forests and 

* On our return to Rome from Naples we had the pleasure of per- 
sonal acquaintance with Mr. Crawford, and of confirming our prepos- 
sessions in his favour by actual observation. The tide had even then 
turned in his favour. He had recovered his health and become 
known to many of his countrymen. While this book is going 
through the press we hear that a sum of $2500 has been made up 
in Boston for his Orpheus. We hope that New- York will not lag 
behind, but will extend her hand to her own son while there is yet 
some faith and generosity in doing so. When he becomes better 
known there will be no merit in sending him orders. 



160 ROME. 






building up towns in a day, or making railroads and 
canals: but surely, the same power that in one 
stage of our progress overcomes physical difficulties, 
will in another achieve intellectual conquests. 

The extensive stables of the Barberini palace have 
been converted into a studio for Thorswaldsen, and 
they are filled with the most exquisite forms which 
invention, memory, imagination, and love can take. 
The collection of sculptures that bears his name gives 
you some idea of the variety and beauty of his works. 
That which impressed me most, and brought tears to 
my eyes, which I ignorantly supposed marble could 
not, is a colossal statue of Christ. His arms are ex- 
tended, and he seems on the point of saying, " Come 
unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and 
I will give you rest." There is a most affecting 
blending of benignity and power in his expression ; 
you feel that " God has anointed him above his fel- 
lows," and that " he will save to the uttermost those 
that come unto him." The head of our Saviour in 
Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper is the only one 
that approaches this in force of expression. Christ 
is attended by his disciples, six on either side. The 
statues were done for a church in Copenhagen. 

There is another admirable set of figures, design- 
ed, I believe, for the pediment of the same church. 
These are necessarily so arranged as to make on 
each side a descending line from the centre figure. 
This is done with consummate art ; each figure seems, 
without design or choice, to have fallen into the at- 
titude expressive of the feeling of the moment. 



ROME. 161 

John the Baptist preaching is the middle figure; 
next stands a scoffer, his head thrown back. An 
old man bends over his staff in devout attention ; a 
young shepherd is riveted to the spot, while two 
boys are playing with his dog; a child is leaning on 
his mother's shoulder ; and another mother is sitting 
on the ground, with her infant in her arms. Besides 
sending these great productions to his native coun- 
try, Thorswaldsen has founded a museum in Copen- 
hagen, and enriched it with copies of his works; 
and thus he will send pilgrims trooping from all 
parts of the world to his far, cold land. No wonder 
the Danes love him, and follow his footsteps, load- 
ing him with gifts and honours. 



My dear C, 

This is the festa of St. Peter ; of course, a great 
day in Rome. As we have been so long negligent 
of the privilege we may any day enjoy of seeing the 
pope, we went this morning to high mass at St. Pe- 
ter's, where he was to be present. He has the merit 
of having risen from the lowest grade of society, 
and is said, besides having considerable learning, to 
be an amiable, inoffensive old man. You know the 
great democratic principle of the admission of all 
to all employments has ever been fundamental in 
the Catholic Church. 

A Catholic ceremony is, to the eye of a Protestant, 
more or less a dramatic show, with a rich theatrical 
wardrobe and dull actors. What, I wonder, would 

02 



162 ROME. 

an humble student of (he Gospels, who had never 
heard of the Catholic Church, think on coming into 
St. Peter's, and walking up the nave under its vault- 
ed and golden ceiling, with its incrustations of pre- 
cious marbles, its sculptured columns, its magnificent 
arches, statues, mosaic pictures, and monuments ; its 
gilded bronze baldachino (made of the spoils of the 
Pantheon), its hundred lamps burning round St. Pe- 
ter's tomb, with his image presiding — and let it be 
his festa, with the pope in the triple crown, gor- 
geously arrayed, surrounded by his cardinals in crim- 
son and embroidered satin, attended by his Swiss 
guard in their fantastic uniform, and by his guarda 
nobili ; what if there were such an uninformed per- 
son as I have imagined among these multifarious 
spectators, from all quarters of the world, what 
would he think on being told that this was a Chris- 
tian temple, and these the disciples and ministers of 
the meek and lowly Jesus, who taught that God only 
accepted such as worshipped Him in spirit and in 
truth 1 

The ceremonies we saw to-day (and which cer- 
tainly would not contribute to this supposed person's 
farther enlightenment) I shall not describe to you. 
The pope, who is an ugly old man with a big nose 
and a stupid expression, had an elevated seat behind 
the tribune, where his priestly attendants seemed 
chiefly occupied in the care of his embroidered vest- 
ment, which flowed many a yard on the ground 
when he stood, was borne by them when he moved, 
and nicely folded and replaced in his lap when he 



ROME. 163 

again sat clown. The cardinals, as a class of men, 
are very noble in their appearance. With the ex- 
ception of two or three middle-aged men, they are 
old, and have the badge of age, their thin and white 
locks fringing their crimson scullcaps. They too had 
train-bearers from an inferior order of priests. One 
part of the ceremony was solemn and thrilling, as a 
devotional sentiment expressed simultaneously by a 
mass of men must always be. At the elevation of 
the Host all the Catholics present bared their heads 
and fell on their knees, the swords of the soldiers 
ringing on the pavement. The music was delicious. 
After the chantings were finished, and his holiness 
had blessed the assembly, he was placed on a chair 
covered with red velvet, the triple and jewelled 
crown was put on his head, the chair was placed on 
poles also covered with red velvet, and borne on the 
shoulders of twelve priests. On each side was car- 
ried a huge fan of peacock's feathers; and thus 
suited and attended, he made a progress down the 
nave and into a side-chapel. He shut his eyes, 
drooped his head, and appeared to me like a sanc- 
timonious old woman ; but, to show how just such 
passing judgments are, I was afterward told the 
poor old man said he habitually closed his eyes to 
escape the giddiness occasioned by his position. 

As we stood in the vestibule awaiting our car- 
riage, cardinal after cardinal drove off; and as I 
saw each heavy coach with fat black horses, gild- 
ed and tasselled harness, and its complement of 
three footmen in embroidered liveries, dash through 



164 ROME. 

an ignorant, wretched multitude, nearly running 
over the blind and lame, those words of doom oc- 
curred to me : " Wo be to the shepherds of Israel 
that feed themselves ! should not the shepherds feed 
the flocks V " The diseased have ye not strength- 
ened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, 
neither have ye bound up that which was broken, 
neither have ye brought again that which was 
driven away, neither have ye sought that which 
was lost." But let us not forget, my dear C, that 
from the herd of priests and monks issued such men 
as WicklifFe and Luther, and that in their body, and 
having died or to die in their faith, are such men as 
San Carlo, Fenelon, and our own C* 

Tired of waiting, K. and I left the rest and walked 
home. Passing a half-open door, we heard a mur- 
muring of tiny voices, and, looking in, we saw in a 
dark, damp, cold den, lighted only through this 
half-open door, a dame's infant-school.f The teach- 

* And here, too, for the sake of our charities, I quote M. Sismon- 
di, who is no lover of priests, and assuredly no favourer of the Ro- 
man Catholic religion. He says, " The pontifical government counts 
among its servants more men distinguished for talents, and fewer for 
their vices or want of probity, than any government of Europe !" 
Query — Does he not mean of Continental Europe ? 

t The powerful writer of the address to the working classes in Italy 
in the " Apostolato Popolare" says, in speaking of the defective 
teaching to the few of that class in Italy who are taught, " Even re- 
ligious books are given to them in a dead language which they do 
not understand. The books which the rulers cause to be distributed 
in the elementary schools teach them to be servile, poor-spirited, and 
selfish i and after the Austrian catechism — the common model — 
4 That subjects should deport themselves towards their sovereigns as 
slaves towards their masters,'' and that the power of the sovereign 
* extends to their property as well as to their person.' " 



ROME. 165 

er, a hard-featured subject, was knitting away for 
life, and teaching these little things, two, three, and 
four years old, their prayers in Latin, which they re- 
peated with the appointed crossings and genuflex- 
ions ! Most of them were ragged and dirty, but 
beautiful enough for Guido's angels. I thought of 
the well-lighted, warmed, and spacious school-rooms 
in my own country, and of the light poured into the 
young mind there !* 



We have been looking at frescoes to-day ; and if 
I should run into rant, my dear C, about them, do 
not think it is to impose on you New World people 
who never have seen them, but that it is the effect 
of novelty and surprise added to their intrinsic beau- 
ty. You are probably aware, as the name implies, 
that they are put on the wall while the plaster is 
fresh ; of course they must be executed with great 
rapidity. The ceiling and the walls of the private 
houses in Italy are embellished in this way; and 
though often done without much expenditure of art 
or money, they are so very pretty that I rather 
dread seeing again our blank ceilings. Fresco 
painting is to us a new revelation of the power of 
the art ; and such a fresco as Raphael's Sibyls, his 
School of Athens, or Domenichino's Life and Death 
of St. Cecilia, in a certain little chapel here, seem to 

* What a curiosity to an Italian teacher would a list of our school- 
books be ! What an inestimable treasure to Italian pupils a single 
one — Miss Robbins's Popular Lessons, for example ! 



166 ROME. 

me as superior to an easel painting as an epic is to 
a lyric poem. Unfortunately, there are but few of 
these masterpieces in good preservation. They suf- 
fer more than oil paintings from damp and neglect. 
The Romans had this art in great perfection. I 
have seen in a gallery of Titus's baths, in an apart- 
ment of Augustus's palace, and in the tomb of Au- 
gustus's freedmen, all now far under ground, fres- 
coes, medallions, flowers, birds, divinities, &c, traced 
with accuracy and grace, and the colours still vivid. 
The Nozze Aldobrandini, now hanging in the library 
of the Vatican, is one of the most beautiful of the 
old frescoes. It is a representation of a Greek wed- 
ding, is supposed to be a Greek painting, and was 
found in the baths of Titus. Guido's Aurora, one 
of the most exquisite poetic conceptions ever mani- 
fested to the eye of man, is still as fresh as if it were 
just dyed in the rainbow, on the ceiling of an apart- 
ment in the Ruspigliosi palace. 

Raphael's Sibyls is also a masterpiece, and it has 
an advantage over the Aurora in bearing the impress 
of the true religion. It seems to me the most for- 
tunate subject a painter ever chose. It is painted in 
an obscure little church (Santa Maria delta Pace) ; 
so uncalculating is genius ! The place to be cover- 
ed was an arch in the nave, the most awkward pos- 
sible, it would seem, for the disposition of the fig- 
ures. But difficulties were only spurs to the genius 
of Raphael ; and so perfect is the grace and nature 
of this picture that it would never occur to you he 
had not place and space at will. As this, after see- 



ROME. 167 

ing the galleries of Florence and Rome, is my fa- 
vourite picture, suffer me to describe it to you, my 
dear C. 

The four sibyls, the lay prophetesses who are sup- 
posed to have intimated to the Old World the reve- 
lations they had received of the coming of our Sav- 
iour, are the subjects of the picture. The time 
chosen is the moment of the angels' communication 
to the inspired women. The first is a beautiful 
young creature in the freshest ripeness of woman- 
hood. Her record-book is in her lap, and her glow- 
ing face, turned towards the angel, conveys the an- 
nunciation, " Glory to God in the highest, and on 
earth peace and good-will to man !" The face of 
the cherub, who is looking at her intently, with his 
chin resting on his closed hand, indicates the joy 
there is in heaven at these tidings to man. 

The next sibyl is writing down the revelation as 
her heavenly messenger reveals it. Her face is in 
profile. It has something more than mere joy ; a 
comprehension of the obstacles to be met and the 
moral revolutions to be made. There is eagerness 
in the angel's face, and an almost Divine energy in 
the young woman's. The art that could give such 
force to such delicate lines is amazing. The face is 
the most spiritual, and I think the most beautiful, I 
ever saw. Her whole soul is so intent on the record 
she is making that it seems as if her pen would cut 
through the tablet. 

The next figure reminds you of classical models, 
of something pre-existent in art, which nothing else 



168 ROME. 

in the picture does. It is very lovely, and express- 
es perfect awe and reverence, as if her inward eye 
beheld the " King of all living things." 

The fourth is a dark old woman, who compre- 
hends the coming struggles with the powers of dark- 
ness, the martyrdoms, the seed to be sown in tears, 
and, seeing the end, is unflinching and unfearing. 

What must Raphael have thought and felt before 
he painted this picture 1 He is the Shakspeare of 
painters, and with almost as full a measure of inspi- 
ration. The picture is a poem, such as I hope may 
be found in the libraries of heaven, if the soul read 
there without the intervention of letters. 

Domenichino's Evangelists are in the four angles 
of the dome of St. Andrea della Valle. They are 
reckoned his best frescoes, and he is reckoned sec- 
ond only to Raphael. The freedom and vigour of 
the figures, and the freshness and harmony of the 
colouring, are striking. St. Mark's muscular arm 
actually stands out from the picture. There is a 
lion (his symbol) at his feet, with lovely children 
playing on his back, at whom he looks round so 
gently that he reminded me of the humane lion of 
Bottom's Pyramus and Thisbe. 

St. John, an angel who holds his inkstand, and 
two little boys at his feet twined in one another's 
arms, are all personifications of love ; commentaries 
on that Divine admonition, " Little children, love one 
another !" 

These frescoes are the transfer and perpetuation 
of actual existence. They have but the one fault 
of Donatella's statue — " they do not breathe." 



ROME. 169 

After looking at these pictures till our necks were 
stiff, we went to San Carlo to see the Cardinal Vir- 
tues, also by Dominichino. But we had hardly got 
in when a young priest ordered us out, because there 
was to be an exposition of the sacrament, and the 
presence of Protestant ladies must not profane the 
ceremony. "We had just come from witnessing, un- 
molested, the same service in the Sistine chapel, in 
the august presence of the pope, and so we told him. 
But the young priest was inexorable ; exorcise us he 
would ; and so, casting a pitiful look at the Lady 
Charity who sat impotent among the Cardinal Vir- 
tues, we were swept out. This is the first discourtesy 
of the sort we have met with here. Narducci, our 
landlord, was so scandalized when we told him of 
it, that, after many exclamations of " is it possible ? 
this — a Roma !" he went to the priest and brought 
an apology, and a very civil invitation to come again 
to the church. It is the studied policy of the Roman 
people, from the pope down, to conciliate the Eng- 
lish ; and such is the precedence given them at the 
religious ceremonies, and so great their number in 
comparison with that of the Italians, that you might 
imagine they were spectacles got up for their edifica- 
tion.* 

* There is another reason, as I have been told by a pious Catholic, 
why so few of his faith are seen at the ceremonies at St. Peter's. 
They are considered by them as rather spectacles than for religious 
edification. 

Vol. II.— P 



170 ROME. 

My DEA.R C, 

January 1. — You must know by this time that 
our friend K — n is not one of those visiters at Rome 
whom M. Sismondi justly reproaches with regarding 
it merely as " a museum where pictures, statues, 
monuments of antiquity, and all the various produc- 
tions of the fine arts are exhibited to their curiosity, 
to whom the 160,000 or 180,000 inhabitants who 
live within the walls of Rome appear merely an ac- 
cessory." K — n sent us a note this morning, inform- 
ing us that there would be an immense concourse of 
the Roman people in costume at the Piazza Lavona, 
and our carriage being soon announced by our coach- 
man sending us up two splendid bouquets — New- 
year's favours* — we set off to see the show. The 
Piazza Lavona is the largest market-place in Rome. 
It was so completely filled with the people, and their 
products and wares, that it was with some difficulty 
we made our way among them. At last we got a 
station in the centre of the piazza near a fountain 
where four river-gods, seated on rocks from which 
the water issues, are sustaining an obelisk. There 
was a fair going on. Very few of the people were 
in costume, unless, alas ! the general badge of South- 
ern Italy, rags, may be so termed. The graceful 

* This was not an uncommon kindness in our coachman ; often, 
on returning to our carriage from some sight-seeing, we found a knot 
of jonquils, or violets, or a paper of delicious smoking chestnuts. 
" The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions, of little (not) 
soon forgotten charities." The humblest, like our good Mariano, 
may throw in their mite. 



ROME. 171 

white head-dress which you see in the pictures of the 
Roman peasantry is uncommon now. The women 
wear in its place a cotton handkerchief tied under 
the chin, which being of a bright colour, has rather 
a pretty effect. Some of them wear cheap English 
cottons, but the general dress at this season is a stout 
woollen plaid, almost perdurable.* The men wear 
hats with high, sugar-loaf crowns; the shape of the 
brims it would be difficult to tell, for I think I have 
never seen a whole one. Their breeches are un- 
strapped at the knee, and their legs sometimes bare, 
but usually covered with what may, by a stretch of 
courtesy, be called a stocking. Every man who 
can command such a luxury once in his life (it is 
kept on as long as it retains a semblance of the 
original garment) wears a cloak, and as gracefully 
as if he were a troubadour. They really look like 
princes in disguise, so lofty, independent, and majes- 
tical is their bearing. Mr. Gibson, the English art- 
ist, in speaking to me of the striking grace of the 
Roman people, imputed it, in part, to the affabil- 
ity with which they are treated by their superiors, 
which saves them from the shyness and constraint 
whose " natural language" (to borrow the phreno- 
logical term) is awkwardness. We alighted to see 
better what was going on. Mariano cautioned us 
to leave in the carriage whatever might be purloined, 
as the place was full of " Lombardi," and explain- 

* These stuffs are, for the most part, manufactured at an establish- 
ment belonging to the government. They cost seventy-five cents 
per yard, a yard and a quarter in width. They are sometimes home- 
made. 



172 ROME. 

ing his meaning by the synonyme Ladri (thieves). 
A curious memorial this of the old wars with the 
Lombards. We made our way amid grain, vegeta- 
bles, poultry, honey, eggs, coarse wares, wretched 
toys, and a most clamorous crowd, and were follow- 
ed by ragged boys screaming " Vuole un facchino V 
("Do you wish a porter?") and were glad to get 
back to the carriage with some paltry toys, the best 
we could find, for Mariano's children. I have never 
seen the children look so happy as to-day ; not one 
but had some trifling toy. 

Lady D. finds the Roman people much deteriora- 
ted during her twenty 7 years' acquaintance with them, 
incivility and surliness in the place of their former 
graciousness and " captivating sweetness of man- 
ners." This may possibly be, in part, owing to the 
influx of English, whose national manners are not 
calculated to call forth " captivating sweetness" in 
return. It is certain the people here do not mani- 
fest the light-heartedness and careless buoyancy we 
have seen elsewhere in Italy ; but may there not be 
the faint dawn of a better day in their thoughtful- 
ness, even though it be sullen and sad 1 

It is said that the Romish religion is nowhere less 
respected than at Rome ; that the women are still 
under its dominion, but that among the men there 
is a pervading infidelity and, of course, a discon- 
tent with the government, that will urge them to 
join in any hopeful movement against it. How can 
it be otherwise when the government, instead of af- 
fording them aid and protection, only puts forth its 



ROME. 173 

power and ingenuity to tax and harass them? 
" Rome," says M. Sismondi, " pretending to have 
eternity at its disposal, takes little care of the future 
of this world." 

The streets are thronged with idle men. A por- 
tion of them are the labourers on the campagna 
who, to avoid the mal-aria, come into the city when- 
ever unemployed; and as festas, including Sundays, 
occur twice or thrice a week, this is nearly half the 
time. On my remarking this concourse of idlers to 
Mr. G., he said, " Perhaps you are not aware that 
many who appear mere idlers are facchini (porters) 
who are waiting for employment." I can only say 
I always see them " waiting" never employed j and 
in Rome, where there is no commerce and no manu- 
factures, what employment can there be for this herd 
of facchini 1 Not absolutely no manufactures, for t 
there are many thousand sculptors, workers in mo- 
saic, makers of conchiliglias, and other like jim- 
crackeries for milords Anglais; but remember, these 
are all articles of superfluity for which there is 
no regular and certain demand. The interchange 
of productions between the different states of Italy 
is discouraged and shackled in every way by their 
rulers, so that the beautiful Roman mosaic has no 
market at Florence, nor the pietra-dura, the manu- 
facture par excellence of Florence, at Rome. 

There is no comfort in buying anything here ; no 
article has a fixed value or price. The seller asks 
the highest price he has any hope of obtaining from 
ignorance and credulity, and the buyer " beats down" 

P2 



174 ROME. 

till his time or his patience is exhausted. I have 
been taken in more than once by supposing that 
"fixed prices" in great letters announced, as it would 
with us, the inflexible rule of the dealer. On one 
occasion I was looking at an article, when K. whisper- 
ed to me that the price was extravagant — I should 
offer less. I pointed to the " fixed prices," and 
shook my head, and, after paying the price demand- 
ed, I had the mortification, before leaving the shop, 
to see another purchaser come in and, after a little 
trafficking, buy the article at half the price I had 
given. Frequently, after solemn asseverations that 
the thing has been offered to us at its ultimate -price, 
we were followed out of the shop and on to the 
pavement with proffers of reduction, and finally it 
has been sent home to us at our own price. And to 
this degree of debasement is a people brought who 
are born in one of the richest climates of the world, 
and loaded with God's good gifts ! 

But do not imagine, my dear C, that this debase- 
ment is universal. It obtrudes itself upon the notice 
of strangers because those who traffic with them 
are most exposed to temptation. 

An American gentleman who has resided in Italy 
for many years told W. that, leaving out of the ac- 
count conjugal fidelity, he had never found in any 
part of the world better faith or more virtue than in 
Italy. This testimony does not prove all it asserts, 
but certainly it intimates that there is some good 
faith and much virtue. Our consul is married to an 
Italian woman, an exceedingly pretty and attractive 



ROME. 175 

person, who, in our exacting New-England, might be 
held up as a pattern-wife. 

Signor N., from whom we hire our rooms, occu- 
pies an apartment next to us, and we are on the 
friendliest terms. We have found him honoura- 
ble and liberal in his dealings, and most kind in 
his attentions. His wife is a highly- accomplished 
artist, one of a large family, all qualified by the ed- 
ucation which a widowed mother, by dint of energy 
and struggling, obtained for them, to secure an in- 
dependent existence. They now cherish that moth- 
er with filial devotion. And, to come down to the 
humblest life, our coachman, who spends all the 
daylight of every day in our service, is invariably 
faithful and patient, and moderate in his demands. 
Now, my dear C, if the only Romans we chance to 
know would be valuable members of society any- 
where, is it not a hint to us to take the denuncia- 
tions of travellers with some allowance, and, at any 
rate, that we may safely enlarge our charities ? A 
little more on this head, and I have done. I will re- 
peat to you, without the slightest deviation, a story I 
have just heard from an English gentleman. A friend 
of his, an artist, who was residing in Rome with his 
wife, lost one or two children. In their first an- 
guish they were advised by their Italian nurse to 
change the scene ; and with that instinct of nature 
which always turns to the birthplace as the universal 
panacea, she begged them to go to her native vil- 
lage, fifty miles from Rome. They had scarcely 
reached there when the cholera broke out, and they 



176 ROME. 

were put in quarantine. They had expected to re- 
main but a few days, and had little money with 
them, and there was no possibility of communicating 
with their friends. Rather a dilemma to be thrown 
in among the priests and Levites of this world! 
There was no borrowing ; for, save some few dol- 
lars laid up in the village for the payment of taxes, 
it was as moneyless as one of our Western settle- 
ments. They lived by barter. The English stran- 
gers were obliged to remain four months. All their 
wants were supplied. The people trusted them in- 
definitely. Quantities of grain were brought to 
them, which they exchanged for smaller commodi- 
ties. They made acquaintance with a gentleman in 
the neighbourhood who lived a secluded but luxu- 
rious life upon two hundred dollars a year ! He had 
a good library, was highly cultivated, particularly 
well informed in regard to everything in England, 
and, furthermore, one of the excellent of the earth. 
All this, dear C, among the dishonest, lying, mur- 
dering, treacherous Italians ! There is some super- 
fluous reviling in this world ! 



Is it a fancy of mine, think you, dear C, or is it 
remarkable that most of the best preserved monu- 
ments here are associated with good names that 
shine out among the great ones of old Rome ? The 
Colosseum bears the family name of Vespasian, and 
is the record of the magnificence and triumphs of 
his son. The Arch of Titus, the conqueror of the 



ROME. 177 

Jews — the man who, when master of the world, sigh- 
ed over every day unmarked with a good deed as 
lost — still spans, almost entire, the Sacra Via; 
Drusus, Constantine, and Septimius Severus, whose 
arches are remaining, are, if not at the extreme right, 
somewhere about the juste milieu of ancient names ; 
and the lofty column of Trajan, " best of the good," 
still bears the record of his deeds. The unimpair- 
ed column of Antoninus Pius is the memorial of a 
man whose name designated his eminent goodness. 
Almost every day we drive under the still perfect 
arch of the gentle Nerva's Forum, while the palaces 
of the Caesars, extended and embellished by such 
beastly wretches as Nero, Caligula, and Domitian, 
are a shapeless mass of ruins ! 



If I had your powers of description in this way, 
dear C, or Cruikshanks' of illustration, I would 
give you a letter worth having on the beggars 
of Rome. The Italian has sentiment in his nature, 
and the beggar expresses it in the form of his pe- 
tition. His " Non m' abbandonate," and " Cari- 
ta, signora, per l'amor di questa imagine !"* kindle 
your imagination if not your heart. How I should 
like to show you the fellow who sits, like a monarch 
on his throne, on the stairs of the Piazza di Spagna, 
and whose smile, disclosing teeth strong enough to 

* " Do not abandon me !" and " Charity, lady, for the love of this 
image !" This last supplication is made near a shrine of the pitiful- 
looking Virgin, where the beggar has what in our trafficking country 
would be called " a good stand for business." 



178 ROME. 

grind all the grist in Rome, and his hearty saluta- 
tion, " Buon giorno, signor," are well worth the bai- 
oc' he asks much more as a right than a favour. He 
is an old receiver of customs, and is well known to 
have a full treasury. " How dare you beg of me," 
asked Mr. G., " when you are already so rich V 
" Ah, signor, I have my donkey to feed." " You 
are well able to feed your donkey." " But I have 
my nine children, signor." There is no answer to 
be made to a fellow who confesses to such luxury ! 
Then there is the poor moiety of a man whose trunk 
(torso !), trussed on to a circular bit of wood slightly 
concave, comes daily down our street of St. Vitale 
at a jocund pace ; and the two old crones at Santa 
Maria Maggiore who hobble towards you with a 
sort of. pas de deux, and seem as well content that 
one should get your baioc' as the other, " equal to 
either fortune." They are probably partners in the 
trade. And there is the handsome youth by the 
French Academy, who has been dying with a 
" sagne di bocca" (spitting of blood) for the last 
fifteen years without any apparent diminution of 
the vital current ! And the little troop of mountain- 
peasants, whose hunting-ground is somewhere about 
the American consul's, with their bewitching smiles, 
sweet voices, and most winning w T ays; a genuine 
lover of happy young faces ought to pay them for a 
sight of theirs. Even beggary is picturesque here. 



ROME. 179 

We went this morning to the Church of St. Agos- 
tino to see Raphael's Isaiah, one of his most famous 
frescoes j the church was so dark we could not per- 
ceive its excellence. But we did see what to you, 
a student of human nature, would be far more inter- 
esting. This church has a statue of the Madonna 
and child which has peculiar virtue. Some poor 
girl having, in an ecstasy of devotion, seen the holy 
mother open and shut her eyes upon her, miracles 
have ever since been wrought for the faithful who 
kneel before this image. I am not sure whether it 
be of wood or stone ; but whichever it be, the foot 
is so worn away with kissing that it has been shod- 
den with silver. The altar on which it is placed 
was (at midday) brilliantly lighted with candles, and 
a semicircle of lamps hung before it. The mother 
is sitting ; the child stands on her knee on one foot 
in a pert attitude. Both images wear glittering 
crowns. The mother's throat is covered with strings 
of pearls. She has a complete breastplate of jewels; 
her arms are laden with bracelets, and her fingers 
with rings ; and, to make her look completely like 
the queen of strolling players, her hand is filled 
with artificial flowers. Kneeling before this image 
in earnest devotion (I saw many tears, but not a 
wandering eye) were a multitude of men and wom- 
en, for the most part ragged and filthy beyond de- 
scription, all of whom, as they came in or went out, 
kissed the silver-shod toe — some again and again 
fondly, as a mother kisses her child ! 



180 ROME. 

But the most extraordinary thing of all is the 
garniture of a pillar on the Virgin's right. It is 
literally covered with every species of small weap- 
on: daggers, pistols, and knives, &c. These have 
been dedicated to the Holy Mother by two classes of 
persons : by those who have been rescued from the 
murderer, and by the murderer who has escaped the 
penalty of his crime. The sanctuary privilege is 
still in force at Rome. A gen d'armes dare not 
follow an offender into a church; he may remain 
there till he is driven by starvation to surrender, but 
no one is permitted to supply his necessities. The 
police of Rome is wretched. The laws are ill ad- 
ministered. Atrocious offences escape justice, and 
small ones, if they be against the Church, are rigidly 
punished. I believe reports of crime here are much 
exaggerated. We have been repeatedly told that 
our street, which is retired and has few habitations, 
is dangerous after nightfall; but our friends come 
and go every evening without molestation, and W. 
seldom leaves us before eleven. The truth is, the 
couriers, who daily meet and gossip on the Piazza 
di Spagna, choose to give a bad name to all lodgings 
remote from that neighbourhood ; and they amuse 
their idle hours with weaving little tragic romances, 
taking care to make them " deep" — like a certain 
young friend of ours, who, in her maiden tragedy, 
burned all her dramatis persona? alive on the stage. 

Mr. G. and W. had an animated discussion here 
this evening, W. insisting that it is the common tes- 
timony of mankind that the Romans are addicted to 



ROME. 181 

assassination, and Mr. G. maintaining that they do 
not strike often, and never but with good cause; 
that there being no public justice to right them, they 
are compelled, like savages, to take the matter into 
their own hands. He said that, notwithstanding all 
the reports about robberies, during a twelve years' 
acquaintance with Rome he had known but one! 
and that, when the Romans rob, they do not stab ; 
they have no cold-blooded cruelty. 

Love, w T hich runs into disease only among the 
higher classes in other countries, plays its daily tra* 
gedies here among the humblest. It is the natural 
offspring of idleness. With these hot-blooded, im- 
petuous Italians jealousy is almost sure to spring up 
with it ; it is, par excellence, the passion of social life 
in Italy. There was a beautiful young woman hired 
by a foreign artist to sit for him ; this is one of the 
most productive of the passive industries of Rome* 
Her husband forbade her going to the painter's ; she 
replied that he did nothing for her, and she must 
earn what she could. Yesterday he followed her to 
the artist's studio, and asked to see the picture of his 
wife. The artist readily admitted him, whereupon 
he plunged a knife into his wife's bosom ; she fled, 
and he stabbed her a second time. To-day she died. 
Public opinion is in the husband's favour, and it is 
said he will only pay the penalty of a few days' im- 
prisonment. 

But what morals can be expected of a people 
w T ho have the w T orst examples of bad faith from 
those who should be their models as well as protec- 

Vol. II.— Q 



182 ROME. 

tors. K — n told me a story of some brigands whs 
had become formidable on the road between here 
and Naples some years since. As the ceremonies 
of the holy-week approached the outlaws felt an 
irresistible desire to "walk the Seven Basilica?;" 
which means, I take it, confessing and doing penance 
in these supremely holy sanctuaries, an observance 
very dear to all good Catholics.* Their chief en- 
tered into a treaty with the pope for permission to 
come and go unmolested, and the holy father, loath 
to repress so pious a wish, granted it. Their rendez- 
vous in Rome was known, and the pope sent his emis- 
saries to persuade them to relinquish their unholy 
trade. The conference was proceeding amicably 
when the pope's lambs turned into wolves, alias gens 
d'armes, and the betrayed brigands were seized and 
bound. " Ah, for shame I" I exclaimed, at the conclu- 
sion of the story ; " this is as bad as our treatment of 
the Indians." " And ours of the East Indians !" re- 
sponded K — n i " all great nations have their pecca- 
dilloes !" When will nations hold themselves bound 
by the strict rule that governs an upright individual % 
When they are in deed as well as in name Christian 
nations — and not till then. 

* " Boniface in 1300, the year of the jubilee, proclaimed ' une indul- 
gence pleniere' for such as, having confessed, should visit for fifteen 
consecutive days the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul. Villani 
reports that during the year there were 200,000 strangers at Rome.'* 
— Sismondi. His holiness, Boniface, understood the art of indirect 
taxation. 



ROME. 183 

The tombs are among the most interesting monu- 
ments about Rome. They annihilate time, and level 
all national and individual differences by speaking 
to you of ties that are universal, and of experience 
common to all. Here, where parents and children 
have wept, you feel the strain of a common human- 
ity ; and the only difference between you and those 
who have lived and suffered ages before you is, that 
wherein you are most blessed they were most 
wretched. The angel of life did not keep his 
watch over the burial-places of their dead. If, per- 
chance, a ray of hope penetrated the clouds and 
darkness that wrapped the tomb, it came from their 
own natures, and was wavering and uncertain, 
most unlike that steadfast and inextinguishable light 
which shines in upon the Christian's souL And 
this, I take it, was in part the reason why the an- 
cients built their splendid mausoleums, such as the 
tomb of Adrian and that of Cecilia Metella, and 
those on the Appian Way, which, even in ruin, ap- 
pear like the vestiges of fortresses and palaces. The 
past was all to them, — pride and love sought to per- 
petuate the memorial of an ended existence. Mem- 
ory fondly lingered where hope had not yet come. 
We have been to the tomb of the Scipios. It is not 
more than fifty years since the tomb of the Scipios 
was opened, and now an exact copy of its most 
beautiful sarcophagus embellishes a cemetery in our 
New World.* Above the entrance to a vineyard is 
* That to Spurzheim at Mount Auburn. 



184 ROME. 

the inscription, " Sepolcro degli Scipioni." The 
barred door was opened to us by a woman, who, 
provided with wax tapers, conducted us down a 
flight of steps and into the interior of the vault by 
a narrow winding way, through the burial-place 
of one of the most illustrious families of Rome, and 
where we were treading they came in sad proces- 
sion to lay their dead. We saw on the. walls of 
these corridors the names, and exact copies of the ori- 
ginal inscriptions, which have been carried off to the 
Vatican. The niches where the sarcophagi, busts, 
and other funereal ornaments were placed are emp- 
ty. Some of these we have seen in the Vatican. 

We have been to the Columbarium, which con- 
tains the remains of the freedmen of Augustus. 
They are called Columbarium from the resemblance 
of the small compartments where the urns were 
placed to pigeon-holes. We knocked, as all an- 
tiquity-hunters must do at Rome, whether they 
are in quest of a palace or a tomb, a bath or a tem- 
ple, at a huge, strong, wooden gate resembling an 
immense barn-door, and were admitted into a vine- 
yard, where we were at once in the midst of sacred 
relics. Broken, antique, sepulchral inscriptions are 
inserted in the wall, some made in vanity no doubt, 
and some in love ; I noticed one of a father jilice 
dulcissimce. Fragments of columns, bits of bas- 
reliefs, and terra-cotta urns were strew T n over the 
ground. We descended a dozen steps into the Co- 
lumbarium, a small apartment with a vaulted ceil- 
ing delicately painted in fresco. The bones, resolved 



ROME. 185 

by fire to small fragments and ashes, are in terra-cotta 
vessels with covers, more like our garden-pots than 
like urns. These are placed in the pigeon-holes. 
Thus reduced, men and women may be packed away 
in a very small compass ; 8000 are said to have been 
bestowed here. There are some small marble sar- 
cophagi embellished with bas-reliefs. Octavia's 
tomb is unknown; and here is an inscription on her 
dressing-maid, and another on her worker in silver. 
But one of the most interesting sepulchral monu- 
ments that I have seen is that of some honest ba- 
kers, close to the walls of Rome. A very noble 
arch with Ionic pillars has lately been uncovered 
there. When Totila, with his barbarians, had pos- 
session of the city, they pulled down the walls. Bel- 
isarius, who was lying at Ostia, returned as soon as To- 
tila retired, and, hastily reconstructing the wall, made 
use of whatever would help to shorten his labour. 
In this way the tomb of Caius Cestus came to make 
a part of the wall, and thus this superb arch, and the 
baker's tomb just in its shadow, were covered up ; 
the tomb is of marble, and in the sides of the walls 
are openings to represent ovens. The frieze is 
sculptured with bas-reliefs representing the baker's 
art, kneading, moulding, weighing the loaves, and 
piling them in baskets ; bread and baskets are of the 
identical form used by the Roman bakers of the 
present day. In a house hard by, whither they have 
been removed from the tomb, are the statues of the 
baker and his wife, worthy elderly people, lying side 
by side on a stone tablet. After going about day 

Q2 



186 ROME. 

after day to see the ruins of temples to imaginary 
divinities, triumphal arches, palaces, circuses, and 
amphitheatres, memorials of the pride and luxury of 
individuals and the misery of " the million," it was 
refreshing, dear C, to find in this baker's pretty 
tomb a proof that the humbler virtues and domestic 
arts were sometimes honoured. 



My Dear C, 

Sunday. — We went to the Church of St. Cecilia 
to-day to see the profession of a nun. Signora N. 
accompanied us, and expressed as sound opinions on 
conventual life as if, instead of a good Catholic 
living under the dropping of monasteries, she had 
been bred in Boston. A carpet was spread in the 
nave, with a double row of chairs set around it, and the 
enclosure was guarded by a small detachment from 
the pope's Swiss guards. By Signor N.'s interest, 
we obtained a place on these extra-exclusive seats. 
We waited two mortal hours. The cardinal who 
was to come here to bury the living, was engaged in 
burying the dead. The mother, with the nurse and 
young bride of heaven, sat near us, and — — , who, if 
she had before appeared to me as a mere fashiona- 
ble inanity floating over the surface of life, now 
made me feel that there was a certain dignity in an 
existence that comprehended the affections of a wife 
and mother. 

The circle of chairs was filled, and a large au^ 
dience, chiefly English, gathered round; finally in 






ROME. 1 87 

came the cardinal and the officiating priests, who 
robed him in embroidered satin and point lace, 
which they took from a trunk previously brought. 
When he was completely equipped, with his jewelled 
mitre on his head, a chant announced the bride's 
approach ; and she entered the church with a friend 
at her side and a train attendant. She appeared 
about nineteen, and with that peculiar expression of 
repressed exultation that you may have seen on a 
silly young girl whose head was exaltee with the 
eclat of a wedding. She was dressed in a load of 
finery, to make more striking her renunciation of 
the pomps and vanities of the world. Her head was 
tricked off with all-coloured false jewels, feathers, 
gold chains, and artificial flowers. Her profuse 
black hair, her only personal wealth, hung in ring- 
lets over her face, neck, and shoulders, and falling 
over the back of her head she had a gauze veil em- 
broidered with silver. The folds of her embroider- 
ed satin gown were sustained by an ultra fashiona- 
ble hump (toumure, par courtoisie), and her train 
was held up by two children three or four years old, 
bedizzened in blue and pink satin, spangles, silver 
fringe, and tawdry artificial flowers, who, as I infer- 
red from feather wings sewed to their backs, person- 
ated angels ! 

The poor thing knelt before the cardinal and made 
her vow of renunciation. She then sat as inex- 
pressive as a wax figure, while he addressed to her 
a sing-song exhortation, in which he held up before 
her a long line of female saints who had endured 



188 ROME. 

unendurable inflictions and mortifications. When 
this precious homily, recited and received without a 
sign of emotion, was over, she was led out by the 
cardinal, and we again saw her, but very imperfect- 
ly, through a grated door in a side chapel; there 
she was disrobed, her hair cut off, and, in the nun's 
habit and veil, she lay under a pall while the ser- w 
vice for the dead was chanted over her. It is not 
long since this whole ceremony was performed in 
the nave of the church ; and the present decent in- 
novation of withdrawing behind the scenes is a faint 
sign that there is life and progress even here. It 
was, after all, though I have spoken of it flippantly, 
a touching sight to see a young creature self-immo- 
lated through the force of most unnatural circum- 
stances; but I do not wonder that in a country 
where the alternative is, for the most part, between 
vice and vacuity, a woman should choose to give a 
religious colour to the latter. 

Female school-education here is in the hands of 
the nuns. You may imagine how well fitted to pre- 
pare girls to be wives and mothers, and effective 
members of society, these poor wretches must be, 
who know the world only through their sighs and 
unavailing regrets. 



The bells are ringing, and so they are in Rome at 
every hour of the twenty-four. There are certain 
convent-bells that ring every fifteen minutes, and 
others that ring through the hour. When I am 



ROME. 189 

suddenly awaked in the night by the ringing of the 
bells, with the deep-sunken impressions of years, 
I fancy myself in my room in W. street, and an 
Albany steamer announcing its arrival. What a 
deadly home-sickness comes over me as I awake to 
the reality, and contrast the indications of the bells 
of the two countries, pretty fairly illustrative of their 
different condition. The steamer's bell announces 
the arrival of the politician, busy with the project of 
making a new governor and dislodging an old one, 
or framing new laws and abolishing the old ; of 
the philanthropist, who has come to examine prisons, 
establish a peace society, disseminate Bibles, or help 
on the extermination of slavery ; of an author, about 
to publish some new theory in religion, or politics, or 
social life, which is to reform the morals and mend 
the manners of mankind ; of the inventor of a new 
machine which is to improve the fortunes of the hu- 
man race and make his own ; of a host of merchants 
to buy and to sell. While the bells are ringing 
they are all on shore; no passports, no Dogcma! 
And what say the midnight bells of Rome 1 Why, 
that the poor monks and nuns must out of their beds 
and troop to prayers ! In the severer orders the 
summons is repeated three and four times during the 
night — this, dear C.,is the productive labour of Rome ! 



I asked an Italian gentleman who was mending 
the fire at Miss M.'s, in the hopeless endeavour to 
send the smoke up the chimney, if the chimneys in 



190 ROME. 

Rome were not apt to smoke. "They all smoke," 
he replied ; " and how can it be otherwise ? the houses 
have been built hundreds of years, and the chimneys 
recently put in." They are an English luxury, and 
seem contrived, as an English writer says, rather 
" to ventilate than to warm." The Italians consider 
fires injurious to health.* There is ice in the street 
now, and a blazing fire of half a dozen good-sized 
sticks is essential to our comfort, while our delicate 
little landlady is warmed with a few coals in an 
earthen pot (called a marito) with an upright han- 
dle, a most inconvenient affair. The immense mar- 
ble-floored apartments of the palaces are warmed 
only by a brasier with a few coals. Once I have 
seen, at some villa, a blazing fire 3 at the Borghese, 
probably, for Prince Borghese is married to an Eng- 
lishwoman. The shrivelled, shivering old women 
sitting out of doors with a marito at their feet are 
forlorn objects. 

You would be surprised at the articles of food ex- 
posed for sale here, such as cock's combs, the claws 
of poultry, blood, and the entrails of animals. I 
smile when I recall the time when our village butch- 
er refused to make a charge for a " calf's head and 
feet," and that even now it is considered a bold in- 
novation to sell liver. Meat is sold here in bits as 
small as we distribute about the table \ indeed, the 
poorer classes scarce taste meat at all. Polenta 

* Our medical gentleman at Naples was so fearful of the feverish 
influence of the fire, that when he passed through the drawing-room 
to his patient's apartment he crept round by the wall. 



ROME, 191 

(hasty-pudding) is here, as in other parts of Italy, 
a prime article of food.* The bread they eat is of 
a good quality, and often made quite luxurious by a 
spreading of lard. They have delicate preparations 
of milk, resembling our curds, but much nicer, called 
ricotta and giuncata. These are thought to be inim- 
itably prepared by the peasants of the neighbouring 
mountains ; we thought them so the other day when 
they came to us from a kind friend in pretty baskets 
covered with fresh leaves. 

Vegetables are very cheap, and the very poor al- 
most live on the coarser kinds. I have seen old 
women in the streets devouring the stumps of cab- 
bages. Soup is their luxury ; soup by courtesy, but 
really the thinnest of broths. Wine holds the place 
to them that tea does to our working people. Our 
servant was looking very surly, and on inquiry we 
learned it was because we had not provided wine 
for her breakfast ! Chestnuts are bread here ; they 
are cheap, abundant, and very delicious, much lar- 
ger than ours, sweet and marrowy, and approaching 
the lusciousness of fruit. Their sweet odours as 
they are roasting perfume the streets which sadly 
need perfuming. 

You will hardly be able to estimate the poverty 
of the Roman people by the indications of the food 
on which they live, without knowing the extreme 
cheapness of good provisions. W. tells me that he 
can get a dinner at a restaurateur's for twenty-five 

* We ordered it now and then for a reminiscence of home, but it 
was made disagreeable to our taste by the admixture of oil. 



192 ROME. 

cents, consisting of soup, three or four kinds of meat, 
a variety of vegetables, a pudding, and a dessert of 
fruits and nuts. 



I wish our grumbling housewives who fancy there 
is no plague with servants but "it lights on their 
shoulders," could hear the statements of grievances 
I hear here, and such as I often heard in England. 
The men-servants here are more capable than the 
women, but they are utterly unreliable ; not having 
the " fear of God before their eyes," there is no de- 
pendance to be placed either on their word or their 
honesty. The women are uninstructed, and misera- 
ble gossips and dawdlers; but being still under the 
dominion of their religion, you have a hold on their 
consciences. Francois avers there is not a woman 
in Italy who knows how to cook ; but Francois holds 
to the old-school opinion of women's capacities. 
My hearsay information is of little worth, but I have 
none other to give. We have employed but two 
women-servants ; the one faithless and efficient, the 
other inefficient and true — passably so. There is 
nothing peculiar to any country in this experience. 

The whole tendency of service here is to corrup- 
tion. Service, for the most part, is paid by fees 
which are irregular and uncertain. Many servants 
of cardinals and princes are not paid by their em- 
ployers, but subsist on fees * they are, in fact, birds 
of prey. For example, a gentleman residing here 
in an official station told me that twice every year, 



ROME. 193 

on the first of January and on the first of July, the 
servants of the princes and cardinals whom he visits 
come to demand a fee from him, and he must pay it. 
The day after his first official interview with the 
pope, a servant's bill, amounting to sixteen dollars, 
was sent to him. When the noted banker Torlonia 
gives a ball his servants levy their tribute — black 
mail — the next day on the guests. To show you in 
what estimation this same gentleman Torlonia is 
held in Rome, it is a common report that his ser- 
vants give his balls ! 



My dear C, you may almost doubt my being in 
Rome, since I have not yet said one word of the 
Vatican, where the history and religion of the Old 
World are recorded by the hand of art. The truth 
is, that from the moment of my visit to Winchester 
Cathedral, I have felt, as I fancy those do who go 
to another world, that the sensations resulting from a 
new state and new manifestations are incommunica- 
ble. I cannot convey to you what I have enjoyed, 
and am enjoying, from painting, sculpture, and ar- 
chitecture ; and when I involuntarily shudder at the 
idea of leaving all these magnificent and lovely 
forms, I doubt the wisdom of our New-World peo- 
ple coming here to acquire hankerings which cannot 
be appeased at home. I would advise no American 
to come to Italy who has not strong domestic affec- 
tions and close domestic ties, or some absorbing and 
worthy pursuit at home. Without these strong 

Vol. II.— R 



194 ROME, 

bonds to his country he may feel, when he returns 
there, as one does who attempts to read a treatise on 
political economy after being lost in the interest of 
a captivating romance. 

You would fully comprehend this danger if you 
had passed but this day with me. First we went to 
the Orti Farnesiana (the Farnese Gardens), where 
we were first shown the remains of Augustus' bath* 
for so a large reservoir of Tibertine stone is called, 
into which flows a stream of the " acqua felice" co- 
pious enough to drown half a dozen emperors. 
Then we were led down broken steps into the baths 
of Livia, where, now buried in the bowels of the 
earth, are apartments suited to imperial luxury. 
The ceiling (shown by wax tapers) is vaulted and 
painted with a border of the richest colour encir- 
cling medallions of miniature animals, loves, and 
fauns. The statues have been removed from the 
niches. These are unquestionable remains of impe- 
rial luxury, and our pleasure was not disturbed with 
doubts, as it sometimes is, when we are told, before 
a broken stack of bricks half hidden with thorns 
and ivy, " this is the palace of the Caesars !" When 
we emerged into daylight our guide led us up a 
flight of steps, and, pointing to a shapeless mass of 
bricks, said, " These are the remains of Romulus' 
house !" Our friend, who used to admire the " mor- 
al effect" of General 's swearing, would call 

this bold lying the " moral courage" of a Roman 

* These attractive names are given and changed " a discretion" by 
the antiquaries and guides of Rome. 



ROME. 195 

guide* But the view from the little platform where 
we stood was no fiction. Before us was an amphi- 
theatre of mountains melting into the atmosphere, 
their snowy edges like glittering clouds ; the dome 
of St. Peter's enfolded in ether; domes, towers, 
churches, ruins on every side ; beyond them the cam- 
pagna, a land-sea, with its soft, green, wavy surface, 
and the Mediterranean in the distance gleaming 
like steel in the sun. No scenery that I have ever 
seen is more beautiful, none can be more expressive, 
than that in and about Rome. From the garden 
we drove quite to the other extremity of Rome, and 
mounted a hill to visit the Church of St. Onofrio, 
where Tasso was buried. It was in the convent ad- 
joining this church that he lodged when he came to 
Rome to receive the poet's crown. There is a tab- 
let with an inscription on the wall over the sacred 
spot where his remains were lain. But a more 
touching memorial of him is an oak-tree in the ad- 
joining garden. It is the largest oak in Rome, and 
is called Tasso's, from the circumstance of his hav- 
ing been carried at his own desire to sit under its 
shadow the day before he died. What a scene for 
a dying poet, the entire city of Rome with its thrill- 
ing memories under his eye, and the mountains en- 
closing the campagna, that, if they appeared as they 
appeared to-day, so shadowy and ethereal, must 
have spoken to his soul of that world on whose 
threshold he stood. 

Come away with us now, dear C, to the Vatican, 
whose galleries the pope graciously opens to the 



196 ROME. 

public at twelve o'clock on the Monday and Thurs- 
day of every week, and permits them to remain 
open till three, when his guards appear, and drive 
the lingering spectators, like a flock of sheep, from 
room to room, till they are fairly out of the palace. 
The Vatican, as you well know 7 , is the pontifical 
palace. It is an irregular mass of buildings, " a 
company of palaces," appended to St. Peter's, built 
from time to time, according to the ability or whim 
of successive pontiffs, without reference, in its exter- 
nal, to architectural harmony or beauty of any kind. 
Mrs. Stark gives 70,000 feet as the circumference of 
these edifices. At twelve o'clock the Piazza of St. 
Peter's is thronged with English equipages, and 
visiters from all part of the civilized world. They 
enter the colonnade that leads to St. Peter's, turn 
and ascend a side staircase, mount to a spacious 
open court (to which privileged carriages may drive 
by making the circuit of St. Peter's), and then enter 
the palace, where, scattered through the immense 
galleries and numberless apartments of the Museum, 
the multitudinous congregation that pressed through 
the portals appear but as a few wanderers. 

My dear C, I shall not attempt to enumerate or 
describe to you the treasures of these marble halls. 
You know that the creative genius of nations which 
I had passed away when Rome was founded, has 
contributed to fill them ; that here are monuments of 
Egyptian and Etruscan art; that here is imbodied 
the " graceful mythology" of Greece • that here, 
in enduring marble, are her philosophers, poets, 



ROME. 197 

priestesses, and nymphs ; and that here is our real 
world of old Rome in her rulers and heroes ; and, 
chiselled while the eye of the artist was on their 
living heads, are the busts of Julius Caesar, Cicero, 
Augustus, Titus, Trajan, and — but a list of them 
would fill a book instead of a letter.* 

Besides the men of past ages, you have their his- 
tory, their occupations, their religious offices, their 
games written in marble. These are gradations of 
adornment, as if to accustom your eye to increase of 
light. The walls at the entrance of the first hall 
are covered with sepulchral inscriptions; as you 
proceed, these are interspersed with fragments of 
friezes and cornices. Along the sides of the walls 
are placed sarcophagi, baths, altars, fountains, urns, 
vases, and capitals. You proceed on through length- 
ening galleries with side-halls, and apartments with 
pictured ceilings, and mosaic pavements, and marble 
columns, to a small octagonal court, in the midst of 
which is a fountain sparkling in the bright, unob- 
structed sunbeams. Around this court is ' a portico 
containing the most precious remains of art, baths 
in which emperors have bathed, and sarcophagi 

* The bust of Julius Caesar is said by the antiquaries to be a faith- 
ful portrait. The face is so deeply furrowed that you can hardly be- 
lieve it to be of a man not more than fifty-six (his age at the time of 
his death). The face is a record of inflexible resolution, invincible 
purpose, and unintermitting anxieties. The mouth is rather like 
Washington's. There is a bust of Augustus Caesar, said to have 
been made when he was a boy of eight or nine, and said to be the 
most beautiful bust in the world. It is faultless in its symmetry ; 
and if he were the crafty and selfish monarch history represents him, 
he must sadly have perverted his nature. 

R2 



198 ROME. 

sculptured for their mouldering bodies.* Enclosed 
in the four angles of this portico are masterpieces : 
the Apollo, the Laocoon, the Antinous, and, last, 
Canova's great works, Perseus and the Pugilists.f 

From this portico you pass to the hall of animals, 
where, I confess, I can never linger, though it is 
filled with works admirable for their art; but ser- 
pents, fish, reptiles, even stags and dogs, have little 
chance when pitted against gods and men. There 
is one most enchanting little apartment that we can 
never pass by, called the Stanza delle Maschere 
(Chamber of the Masks), from the masks represented 
in its mosaic pavement. Among several masterpieces, 
it has an exquisite Faun in Rosso Jintico, found in 
Hadrian's villa, with the Faun's insignia, the basket, 
the goat, and the grapes hanging round his joyous 
face. There is another we always enter too, if 
we can tear ourselves . from the Apollo in time, in 
which stands, on an exquisite mosaic pavement,J a 

* Some of the sarcophagi are among the most beautiful works of 
art, such as that famous one in the capital on which the battle of 
the Amazons is sculptured. That with the story of Clytemnestra, 
and many others which I examined, would seem to us subjects most 
unsuited to sepulchral embellishment. 

+ No works of modern artists, excepting Canova's and Thorwald- 
sen's, have been admitted into the Vatican ; and 1 hope my presump- 
tion may be forgiven if I express a doubt whether Canova's will re- 
tain their enviable position after the partiality of his contemporaries 
has passed away. The author of Rome in the Nineteenth Century 
says that Canova's " Perseus looks more like an actor representing 
Perseus than like Perseus himself." A similar criticism might be 
extended to his other works ; they have not the free, untouched na- 
ture of the antiques. 

% This is the most beautiful pavement (except the unparalleled 
fragment of Pompeii) we saw in Italy. It was found fifty miles 



ROME. 199 

porphyry taza or vase forty-two feet in circumfer- 
ence. 

But, my dear C, I must hurry on through apart- 
ments filled with busts, candelabra, and every form 
of magnificent vase of marble, alabaster, and jas- 
per ; through " the hall of geographical maps" a 
quarter of a mile in length, on whose walls are 
painted in fresco maps of all the pope's dominions 
and ground-plans of his cities, to the halls of tapes- 
try, worked after Raphael's cartoons. But not even 
here can a lover of Raphael linger, for on and above 
are his Madonna di Fuligno, his Transfiguration, and 
his Camera These camere or chambers are four 
large unfurnished (unfurnished !) rooms painted in 
fresco, walls and ceiling, by Raphael, or by his best 
pupils from his designs.* Each picture occupies 
one side of a room. After glancing at the rest I 
always find myself standing before " the School of 
Athens." This was a subject of Raphael's own se- 
lection. He was unshackled by dictum of pope or 
cardinal, and freely followed out the suggestions of 
his inspired genius, and you have the result in the 
most dramatic combination of character, circum- 
stance, and expression-! 

from Rome, and, encircling a colossal head of Medusa, represents 
the combat of the Centaurs and Lapithae. 

* The ceiling of one apartment is an exception. The rooms were 
given into Raphael's hands with orders to efface the paintings al- 
ready there. He refused to touch one ceiling which had been done 
by his master, Peruggino, and this remains, a memorial of his affec- 
tions more precious even than the memorials of his genius that sur- 
round it. 

f I shall do my readers a favour by transcribing the description of 
this picture from " Rome in the Nineteenth Century:" 



200 ROME. 

It would seem like profanity to leave the Vat- 
ican without mentioning the Transfiguration and 
the Communion of St. Jerome, by Domenichino 
They are called the two great masterpieces of the 
world. Raphael's was the last picture on which he 
worked, was not quite finished when he died, and 
was borne before his body in his funereal procession. 
Domenichino received but twelve guineas for his 
from ignorant monks, who suffered it afterward to be 
thrown into a garret. But here it now stands, for 
the admiration of the world, and to dispute the palm 
with Raphael's favourite work. Between these pic- 
tures we always finish our day at the Vatican, and 

" On the steps of a Grecian portico stand Aristotle and Plato en- 
gaged in argument, and each holding a volume in his hand. Their 
disciples are ranged around, attentively listening to them. Beneath 
is Diogenes, an inimitable figure, listlessly extended on the steps. 
On the left, at the top, is Socrates earnestly talking to young Alcibi- 
ades, who listens in a lounging sort of attitude, as if half subdued 
by the wisdom, half willing to turn away from it, yet still resolved 
to give the reins to pleasure and run the career of gay enjoyment. I 
know not, however, why the young Grecian was not made more 
handsome. The old man beside him, with a cap on, listening to Soc- 
rates, is inimitable. Another, looking over the shoulder of Pythago- 
ras, who is writing his works, is, if possible, still finer. The figure 
in deep, abstracted thought, leaning on his elbow, with a pen in his 
hand, is Zoroaster holding a globe ; Archimedes is stooping to trace 
a geometrical figure with compasses on a slate on the ground ; and 
the whole group that surrounds him are beyond all praise. In the 
corner, on the right, the figure with a black cap is the portrait of 
Raphael himself, and that beside him of Pietro Peruggino." 

It is strange that the writer of this description, a woman, should 
have omitted to notice the figure of Aspasia, whose intellectual beau- 
ty is so shaded with sadness. She reminded me of Hamlet in his 
soliloquy of " To be, or not to be." She seems revolving in her 
mind a mystery ; the capacities of her nature and the degradation of 
her sex. 



ROME. 201 

are only driven from them by the unwelcome cry of 
the guards, " Si chiude !" the signal for closing the 
gates of Paradise upon us. 

We make our exit through the arcades, or " Log- 
gie di Raffaelle." These arcades are attached to 
three stories of the palace, running along one side, 
and are more like what we call a piazza than any- 
thing else. They are all painted by Raphael. In 
one series he begins, as some preachers do in their 
maiden-sermon, at. the creation of the world, and 
comes down to the crucifixion. They repay the 
study of days, but we have not yet contrived to 
save a half hour for them ; and you will not won- 
der at this, my dear C, if you remember how much the 
Vatican contains to be examined besides the galleries, 
through which you may well think I have taken but 
a bat's flight ; its immense library, and the Paolini 
and Sistine Chapels, both painted by Michael Ange- 
lo — the Sistine with his masterpiece, the Last Judg- 
ment.* 

My dear C, we began this morning with look- 
ing at the antiquities of old Rome ; then followed 
a memorial of the middle ages at Tasso's tomb; 
and in the museum of the Vatican we have been 
looking back, through ages and ages, far into the 
shadowy past. Do you wonder at the common tes- 
timony of travellers that you live a month in every 
day at Rome ! and what a month it is ! 

* The author of Rome in the Nineteenth Century asserts on the 
authority of a "very accurate" Italian, "That you cannot see the 
Vatican Museum without walking a mile and three quarters'" 



202 ROME. 

I walked an hour this morning with R. up and 
down the colonnade of St. Peter's. There had been 
a ceremony in the Sistine Chapel, and the guarda 
nobile, in their rich uniforms, as they came slowly 
winding down the magnificent marble staircase in 
deep shadow, and the Swiss guards in their motley, 
at the end of the colonnade, their arms gleaming in 
the fitful sunbeams, and the light glancing over 
Charlemagne and his voluminous drapery, made a 
picture for us as we pursued our damp and other- 
wise gloomy walk. 

We finished the morning in the Vatican library, 
where we had a pleasure quite peculiar to it, I be- 
lieve, of walking through the largest library in the 
world without seeing a book ! not the largest in the 
number of books, for, though it is enriched by the 
accumulations of ages and the bequests of monarchs, 
the number, including MSS., does not exceed 100,000 
volumes — but largest in space ! The principal hall 
is 1200 feet long, and into this you enter by one of 
200 feet which, in my ignorance, I took for the 
whole, and dawdled through it, looking at its rich 
vases and frescoed walls, which are adorned with 
portraits of all the great promoters of learning from 
Mam down. The books and MSS. are locked in 
w T ooden cases, of which I presume his holiness 
keeps the key more tenaciously than he does that he 
holds in St. Peter's right, as he had far rather open 
the gates of Paradise to the dead than the Paradise 
of knowledge to the living. The pictures on the li- 



ROME. 203 

brary walls representing the munificent popes gra- 
ciously receiving from their authors literary produc- 
tions and discoveries in science, seemed rather a se- 
vere comment on the present pontiff's exclusion of 
letters and veto of literary associations ! 

The custode unlocked many of the cases to exhibit 
their treasures. Among them are a quantity of 
quaint old pictures of the earliest period of the re- 
vival of the arts. It is curious to see how the pat- 
ronage of the Church has prevented the exercise of 
the painter's invention. Here are the same crucifix- 
ions, martyrdoms, and holy families that you see now 
freshly-painted in Camucini's studio. 

We saw relics of the early Christians, crucifixes 
and lamps that were found in the catacombs. A 
strange passage the mind makes, dear C, from this 
pontifical palace to St. Peter and his friends lighting 
these lamps in the caverns of the dead for their pro- 
scribed worship. 

A curious relic of another kind was shown us : 
the hair of a woman found in a tomb on the Appi- 
an Way. There they are — a little mouldy — the 
very tresses that some 2000 years ago adorned the 
head of a Roman lady, probably the only unchanged 
mortal remains of all the masses of men and women 
that lived in ancient Rome ! 



My DEAR C, 
The museum of the Capitol, its sculpture, paint- 
ings, and relics of antiquity, would be quite enough 



204 ROME. 

to draw the travelling world to Rome, if everything 
else here were swallowed up. Volumes have been 
written upon it, but I shall wisely abstain from wri- 
ting even one letter, and only tell you what exquisite 
pleasure I have had from visiting again and again 
the Dying Gladiator which is in this collection. 
The artists appear to me often to have sacrificed ex- 
pression to serenity — to a sort of superhuman, divine 
tranquillity ; but the brow and lip of the dying gla- 
diator express the deepest, saddest emotion. Perhaps 
it owes something of its effect to Byron's admirable 
interpretation. But it seems to me that if he had 
never written, and this statue had never received its 
suggestive appellation, one could not look at it 
without seeing a man of refined nature death-strick- 
en without hope, and whose most dejected thoughts 
are on some distant object of tenderest love. It was 
for Byron's gifted vision to see in these objects " his 
young barbarians all at play." 

There are masterpieces in the hall of paint- 
ings in the Capitol. The picture that kept me 
standing before it half an hour when I was sick 
with weariness, is Guido's St. Sebastian. The mar- 
tyrdom of this poor saint is a favourite subject with 
the painters, and you see him in all the galleries 
stuck full of arrows. Mere physical suffering is a 
vulgar means of producing effect. Guido exhibits 
the physical sensation to show the triumph of the 
soul ; it is the deep shadow that brings out the 
light. The young martyr is a beautiful boy of four- 
teen, innocent as a baby and fresh as a Hebe. His 



ROME. 205 

hands are tied together above his head to a tree ; 
they have not only an unresisting expression, but 
one of voluntary submission ; one arrow is sticking 
in his side, another in his armpit. The calm, sweet 
resignation of his face expresses, " Though he slay 
me, yet will I trust in him." 

Among the curiosities of the Capitol (we always 
look in faith, dear C. ; it is a great help at Rome) is 
the bronze wolf, with her foster-sons, mentioned by 
Cicero, and said to have been struck in the prophetic 
storm on the night before Caesar's death — the first 
rostral column, as appears by its inscription — and 
the Fasti Consulares, or lists of the consuls (nearly 
entire), with the date of their election and the term 
of their service engraved upon stone tablets. 



The generosity of the proprietors of the Roman 
palaces, in throwing them open to the occupation of 
visiters, is worthy of all praise. Occupation it may 
be called, as from morning to night they are trav- 
ersed by these new hordes of Northern invaders. 
The ground story of a Roman palace is given up to 
menial offices and shops; the picture-gallery occu- 
pies the second, or the greater part of it. A range 
of spacious rooms and halls is filled from floor to 
ceiling with pictures. There is little furniture ; 
curtains, perhaps, of faded damask, and chairs and 
tables centuries old. I have never seen, excepting 

in the S Palace, any look of habitancy. There 

we found warm rooms, and a table spread with 
' Vol. II.— S 



206 ROME. 

books, drawings, and the delicate needlework of a 
]ady who had been driven from the room by our en- 
trance. Within the last few days rumour says that the 
obstinacy of this lady in insisting on having the choice 
of her own rooms has led to a conjugal quarrel, and 
ended in her leaving her husband's bed and board, 
and taking lodgings in another palace. I could fill a 
letter with a mere list of the pictures of one of these 
galleries. They are vast storehouses of art, more or 
less valuable ; but not one of them but contains 
some works of the first painters who have ever lived. 
Almost every day we have a new one to visit. Es- 
timate our industry, if you can, and thank me for 
imitating Byron's sensible example, and, instead of 
aragging you round with us, writing " Vide Guide- 
book ;" and if that guide-book should chance to be 
Madame Stark's, you will admire her laconic opin- 
ions of pictures thus expressed after the insertion of 
the name, !— ! !—!!!! 

Of all countries, the southern part of Italy would 
appear the most delicious for rural enjoyments. The 
villas about Rome are abandoned from dread of the 
malaria. Their possessors go to them in winter 
only, and then for short periods. The Romans, with 
their resources of soil and climate, might make par- 
adises of their villas, if they studied and obeyed na- 
ture instead of torturing her with trimming their 
trees into every fantastical form, imprisoning their 
avenues with hedges that look as much as possible 
like solid green walls, and laying out their garden- 
grounds, like those of Albani, with coloured stones 



ROME. 207 

or flowers in arabesque patterns ! But why, you 
may ask me, with the everlasting inconsistency of 
human expectations, look for everything here 1 I 
am not sure I should not steal away from the fault- 
less beauty and perfection of adornment of an Eng- 
lish nobleman's park, garden, and conservatories, 
to wander over the old Mattei Villa on the Ccelian 
Hill, ruined and abandoned as it is, with its rag- 
ged berceaus, its untrimmed rose-hedges, its bro- 
ken-nosed statues, and its vineyard, as it now is, 
broken and sear, for from its high-swelling grounds 
you have an unbroken view of the mountains that 
half girdle Rome. You turn your eyes from Soracte 
to Tivoli, to the Sabine Mount, to Jilbano; they 
bear names to conjure with; and it seems as if 
Nature delighted in showing them in a light she has 
for nothing else. They are invested with a silvery 
mist ; you would call it ethereal, for there is nothing 
dimming or shadowy about it ; but I fear ethereal 
mist is nonsense. It is a sheathed light, a brighter 
moonlight. The outlines blend with the atmosphere. 
Before you is the wide, desolate campagna with its 
sepulchral grass, and the long lines of broken aque- 
ducts, Cecilia Metella's tomb, the huge ruins of Car- 
acalla's baths, St. John Lateran's statues stand- 
ing boldly up against the sky, the walls of Rome, 
with their gates, towers, turrets, and voices of histo- 
ry ; and the whole city of Rome beneath you, with 
its living crowds, and its dead congregations, its St. 
Peter's, and its desolate places where the " tent-roofed 
pine" and the slender cypress stand as mourners for 
the dead. 



208 ROME. 

At the Villa Albani, whose treasures of art any 
monarch in Europe might envy, we found some- 
thing much rarer in the dwelling of a Roman prince 
than chef d'oeuvres of painting or sculpture ; car- 
peted rooms with a comfortable enjoyed aspect, fire 
in the chimney, and English books and fresh jour- 
nals on the tables. Irving's Alhambra was among 
them. Our cicerone told us the padroni read Eng- 
lish : a sign of intellectual life. You will not think 
me quite a savage, dear C, though the lovers of art 
might, if I tell you what most interested me at the 
Villa Albani. I had been looking at the admi- 
rable group of Daedalus and Icarus, and as I turned 
from it my eye fell on some toys thrown by a tired 
child into a magnificent old vase. I forgot the gods, 
nymphs, and heroes about me ; my thoughts flew 
home to you, my dear C. ; to your " young barbarians 
at play," and I hung brooding over the little tin 
coach and battered doll till I was summoned away. 

The Borghese Villa is on the Pincian Hill, just 
under the walls of Rome, and is, indeed, princely in 
its extent and decorations. Prince Borghese is noted 
for his liberality, and as, alas ! few Roman princes 
now are, for his immense wealth. 

The author of " Rome in the Nineteenth Century" 
happily says that " Julius Caesar only bequeathed his 
gardens to the Roman people, the Borghese princes 
give theirs." Their gates and doors are always 
open, and the visitor enters them when and how he 
pleases. R. and E. often vary their drives by going 
through those beautiful grounds, where the fountains 






ROME. 209 

are gushing, the grass is always green ; where the 
hedges and long avenues of trees are always ver- 
dant, and the birds always singing ; and where you 
may lose yourself in the sweet fancy of a perpetual 
summer if you will not foolishly look about for bird- 
cages, and observe that the trees are cypress and 
ilex (a species of oak that never changes), and the 
hedges of laurels. Certainly there was no illusion 
in the roses we saw blooming there in profusion on 
the 29th of December. How far below zero stood 
your mercury on that day, dear C. 1 

I passed four hours on Friday in walking through 
the glades and avenues of the Doria Villa with Lady 
D., and came to the conclusion that four hours could 
scarcely be more delightfully passed than with an 
agreeable companion there. It is on the western 
side of the Tiber. Its present mistress is a beautiful 
young Englishwoman of the Talbot family; but 
there is no English mark upon her villa; and per- 
haps it is good taste to keep up what is national and 
characteristic. Nothing can be better than the no- 
ble pines that embellish these grounds, and which, 
wherever you see them, appear in striking harmony 
with the spirit of the scenery of Rome. The pine 
of Italy is unlike any that we have, and that of 
Rome seems to me richer and broader than I have 
seen elsewhere. It has a straight and lofty trunk, 
and a broad, horizontal top of foliage that seems to 
have been growing deeper and deeper ever since it 
or the world stood. The affluence of fountains at 
this villa is, too, a characteristic beauty. The same 

S2 



210 ROME. 

stream that supplies the Paulina, the Niagara of Ro- 
man fountains, is conducted across the Doria Villa. 

It is peculiar to Rome that, stay here as long as 
you will, if you have a month, a day, an hour, ten 
minutes to spare, you may fill it with some object of 
deep interest. We had a half hour on our hands 
after leaving the Doria Villa, and Lady D., who selects 
her objects with the skill that can only be acquired 
by a long familiarity with everything in and about 
Rome, drove to the Paulina Fountain, to the beautiful 
view on the Janiculum, and to St. Pietro in Monto- 
rio, where, in a court adjoining the church, is a small 
circular temple designed by Michael Angelo, with 
columns of Oriental granite, erected on the very spot 
where St. Peter was crucified. So says tradition, 
and so believe the faithful. 



My dear C, you can hardly imagine anything 
more sombre than a drive in the evening through 
the wretchedly-lighted streets of Rome. Teeming 
as they are with human life in the daytime, by 
eight o'clock you see only here and there a dim 
form shrinking away from your coach-wheels, or an 
indistinct figure stealing along in the deepest shade 
where all is shadow. There is the gloom of night 
among the tombs, without the consciousness that 
" the weary are at rest, and the wicked have ceased 
from troubling." If you go to visit a friend lodged 
in a palace, you will have the happiness to find the 
staircase lighted, and a porter ready to admit you ; 



ROME. 211 

but a Roman house is like a closed prison. We went 
last evening to see our countrywoman Mrs. L. After 
Francois had rapped repeatedly we heard a child's 
voice uttering the never-failing inquiry, "Chi el" 
(" Who is it ?"), to which Francois responded " Ami- 
ci" (" Friends"). After a long pause, and impatient 
shouts from Francois, seconded by Mariano, of " Apri- 
te i" " Aprite !" (" Open the door !"), « Ecco !" said 
the little voice, and "Bravo!" cried Francois; and 
the parley was ended by the child opening the 
door and conducting us up a long staircase by the 
light of a brazen antique lamp in her hand, rather tal- 
ler, it seemed to me, than she was. 

The lower classes of the people are en scene in 
the streets ; and the stranger, who has no opportu- 
nity of seeing the better condition of Italian life, has 
here his best opportunities for observation; and I 
assure you, my dear C, these streets are a curious 
and affecting spectacle to one accustomed to the 
bustling, achieving industry of New-York, or to the 
quiet diligence and innocent leisure of our village 
life. The first thing that meets my eye as I come 
into the drawing-room in the morning is the drilling 
of soldiers before our window. This is the great 
instruction and business of Rome ! 

As we drove over to the Vatican to-day I was 
fancying how our little B., with her quick sympa- 
thies, would endure the aspect of this throng of peo- 
ple, who, in the affecting language of F. B.'s slave, 
" have no prospect :" how she would by turns laugh 
and cry ; but I fear the tears would carry the day — 



212 ROME. 

try it, dear B. Take this seat beside me. The 
streets, with an unclouded sun for weeks, are mud- 
dy and slimy; they are so narrow and the houses 
are so high, that at this season they have no chance 
to dry. That heap of indescribable filth is permitted, 
as you perceive by the word " immon&ezza" on the 
wall — this, like many corners of the streets, is a 
place of common deposite. We have turned into 
the Via Serpenti, and here you may see the average 
condition of life in Rome. In the English quarter 
it is better, in other quarters much worse. The win- 
dows of the lower stories are grated, not glazed. 
Most of the workshops have no windows ; the light 
is admitted through the open door, and most cheer- 
less and comfortless they are in these damp, sunless 
streets when the weather is as cold as our ordinary 
March. But, alas ! there are few people in these 
workshops, and little to be done in them !* You 
are shuddering, B. You fear we shall trample down 
some of the people in this crowd ; there is no dan- 
ger ; the coachmen are accustomed to driving through 
full streets, and the people know so well how to 
take care of themselves that they never move aside 
till the horses' hoofs are close upon them. Do you 
observe the sullen, brooding aspect of those men 
who are sauntering up and down in the sun? neU 

* Where there is an impoverished population like that of Rome, 
there is, of course, little employment for domestic artisans, the hat- 
ter, the shoemaker, &c. The visiters at Rome provide for their per- 
sonal wants before they go there. Wo be unto you if you chance to 
need a new hat, a pair of shoes, or gloves in the city of the Caesars ! 
You can get them but of a wretched quality and at a dear rate, 



ROME. 213 

ther talking, observing, nor observed, or the man 
leaning against that ruined arch wrapped in his tat- 
tered cloak with a remnant of a hat ] What a ma- 
jestic, free, and graceful air he has ; he looks like a 
ruined rebel-chieftain brooding over fresh mischief. 
But I see the men on the piazza, playing at ball, 
quoits, and mora, have caught your eye — or are you 
looking at the women in that door-step who are 
clamouring and gesticulating at such a rate ? Do 
you think they have detected a thief or discovered 
a murderer? no, it is but their ordinary manner. 
They are more cheerful than the men, because they 
are even more ignorant; they think less, and they 
have some employment; sewing and knitting are 
unfailing to women. You are wasting your pity on 
those babies ; for though they are left to the tending 
of these pale, lean little children not more than four 
or five years old, and though (as I am told) those 
swaddling-clothes in which they are wrapped like 
mummies are not opened more than once a week, yet 
they are quiet and contented. 

In five weeks that we have now been here, and 
every day, and all day, in the street amid this baby 
population I have never heard but one crying; is 
not this a fact in favour of the virtue of the open 
air ? This seems to me their only advantage. 
These beginnings of human life, so hailed and cher- 
ished with us as the blossoms of future-sustaining 
fruit, are here but a burden. I have never once 
seen a child caressed in Rome, even by its mother ! 
Do you ask why there are so many soldiers, idle as 



214 ROME. 

the idlest, mingling with the crowd ? — dogs watching 
the flock, my dear, but ill-trained, ill-fed, and in- 
operative; the pope's government has not energy 
enough to maintain a vigorous police. Those are 
Capuchins ; you will meet them in every street in 
Rome, with their butternut-coloured, hooded gowns, 
fastened with cords around their waists, their long 
beards, and their feet shodden only with an incrus- 
tation of dirt ; and this is a procession of Dominicans 
*-- noble-looking men, are they not 1 these vehicles 
have stopped to let them pass, and we must stop 
too. "What huge animals are the oxen attached to 
these vehicles, and observe the half-circular pent- 
house of skins by which the driver shelters himself 
from the wind — not a bad contrivance. Ah, the 
beggars are taking advantage of our pause to come 
out upon us from the sunny steps of that magnificent 
church, where they always congregate. Listen to 
them ; mark the words of their petition, forever re- 
peated and often true, and thank God, dear B., that 
you never heard it in your own country. "Ho 
fame!" "Muoro della fame!" "Non m'abban- 
donate !" (i I am hungry !" " I am dying with 
hunger !" ts Do not abandon me !" 

See, as we pass the bridge of St. Angelo, and the 
filthy street that debouches into the Piazza di St. 
Pietro, able-bodied men lolling on those wooden 
benches, and women in rags, with faces and forms 
that might personate Sabine matrons. See the blind 
and old stretching their hands for charity, and the 
cardinal's gilded coach dashing on before us. But 



ROME. 215 



we are at the Vatican — shall we go in, and in that 
beautiful marble world forget this world of flesh and 
blood — of sensation and suffering ?* 



* There is enough inexplicable misery in the world ; the want 
and suffering of the Roman people are not so. There is in M. 
Sismondi's " Etudes sur l'Economie Politique" a very instructive 
essay on the Campagna of Rome, in which he shows, after laborious 
investigation and accurate personal observation, that the condition 
of the land, and the misery resulting from it, are owing to a violation 
of those laws of Providence which, if strictly observed, would se- 
cure food and raiment to every member of the human family. He 
does not look at the Campagna through the veil in which poets and 
picturesque tourists invest it, but he sees and exposes the abuses 
which have reduced it to its present desolateness and cursed it with 
malaria. It is impossible to compress M. Sismondi's facts into our 
narrow limits ; but it is easy to see that malaria and every other 
mischief must result from the present mode of cultivation. An ex- 
tent of territory, aying in some directions twenty, in others fifty 
miles from Rome, is in the hands of about eighty proprietors, whose 
only object is to get the greatest possible amount of revenue for 
themselves, with the least possible cost of labour. As, in its present 
vicious mode of cultivation, grazing produces greater returns to the 
proprietor than tillage, no portion of the land is ploughed more than 
once in ten years. There is one man over all, called Mercante di 
Campagna ; he has superintendents under him, who, like the over- 
seers of the slaves of the South, traverse the fields on horseback, see- 
ing that others work. The actual labourers are brought, not from 
Rome, but from the mountains ; some even from the kingdom of Na- 
ples. They come with their families, sometimes in companies of 
five hundred. They encamp on the Campagna, and sleep on the 
ground, or creep at night into the catacombs, the old towers, or the 
tombs. They are fed in the cheapest possible manner. Is it strange 
that, at the most moderate computation, at least a tenth of their num- 
ber perish every season, though the season be short — the sowers 
being from one district, the reapers from another, and so on." The 
principle by which human life is multiplied, and sustenance, com- 
fort, and progress secured to it, is totally neglected, viz., the giving 
to the labourer a fair share of the product of his labour, and connect- 
ing him by residence on and interest in the soil he cultivates. Com- 
pare the condition of the foreign and stinted labourer on the Cam- 



216 ROME. 

I have never yet met a stranger in Italy who did 
not profess to love Rome. Here he lingers, and 
here he returns ; here, though he be of the dullest 
mould, he will be waked to a new existence ; and 
after a little while will find himself getting the feel- 
ing of a lover for the desolate places of the old city. 
I have been disappointed in the ruins ; not in their 
effect, but in their condition. Excepting the Colos- 
seum, the Pantheon, the Temple of Vesta, and a few 
others, they are such mere ruins, so changed in form, 
and stripped of their original embellishments, that 
they only serve to kindle the enthusiast or puzzle 
the antiquary.* 

pagna with that of the hopeful young proprietor on our most un- 
wholesome new lands ; no wonder that in the one case the malaria 
is conquered, and that in the other it goes on conquering and to con- 
quer, till Rome must become its own inevitable tomb. 

* Our servant was quite un- Italian in his tastes, and often amused 
himself with our zeal. "You like broken stones," he said; "I like 
news" (meaning new things). " I would not give Astor House for 
all the ruins in Rome." This he said when we had kept his dinner 
waiting, having spent the day in wandering through the broken 
" arches of the palace of the Caesars" and visiting Sallust's garden. 
The massive foundations only of the house of this doubtful and lux- 
urious Roman are traceable. The form of the circus adjoining his 
garden is discernible, and at its extremity is the fragment of the wall 
of a temple, and a few of the niches in which beautiful statues were 
found. One of the obelisks that adorns the modern city was found 
here. But though these adornments have long ago disappeared, we 
felt, as' we walked through the rustling caves, with broken buttress- 
es matted with dangling ivy hanging over our heads, the presence 
of the great men who had walked and talked here, and, perhaps, 
sometimes not more wisely than we ! 

When you measure the extent of private possession in old Rome, 
the gardens^ circuses, and all the appliances of individual luxury 



ROME. 217 

But there are objects in Rome that indescribably 
surpass your expectations, which indeed, I honestly 
confess,, scarcely entered into mine ; among these are 
the scenery of Rome and its surroundings, the obe- 
lisks and pillars, and the fountains which almost re- 
alize your fancies of Oriental adornment. As to art 
in Rome, antique and modern, as you may imagine 
even from my very inadequate expression of our 
pleasure, it creates for us of the New World a new 
life. 

I have as yet said nothing to you of the churches 
of Rome, simply because so much has already been 
said, and for another, not quite as satisfactory reason, 
that so much remains to say which I have no power 
to communicate. There is little beauty in their ex- 
terior, and that little is impaired by their being 
hedged in by other buildings. The effect of the ex- 
terior of an old Gothic village church in England, 
with its harmonious accompaniments, is better than 
that of any church in Rome ; but, compared with the 
interior of these churches, any Protestant church 
that I have seen, even Winchester Cathedral, is like 
a disfurnished house. The Romish churches have 

within the walls of the city, you wonder where " the million" were 
lodged; truly, they were herded together as 

" Woollen vassals, things created 
To buy and sell with groats, to show bare heads 
In congregations." 

It was reserved for a later period of the world, and a then undis- 
covered country, to put within the power of these " rank-scented" 
vassals a name, a political existence, and a home with all its sv/eet 
charities. 

Vol. II.— T 



218 ROME. 

fallen heirs to the accumulated art and wealth of the 
Old World. The columns that embellished the tem- 
ples of the gods now support the roofs of the Chris- 
tian temple. The jasper and porphyry that adorned 
their palaces, and the sarcophagi in which their em- 
perors and heroes were embalmed, are now conse- 
crated to the altars of the saints. The vases for 
their lustral water are now the benitiers from which 
the pious Catholic crosses himself. 

These churches have been enriched, too, with the 
spoils of the Eastern world, with the gifts of em- 
perors and queens from St. Helena's days to ours ; 
and with the offerings of rich penitents who hoped 
at the last to drive a good bargain by purchasing 
the treasures of the other world with those they 
could no longer enjoy in this. Infinite industry has 
been employed on them, and art has given them its 
divinest works — such works as Raphael's Sibyls, 
Guido's Archangel Michael, and Domenichino's Fres- 
coes.* 

How I have sometimes wished for some of you at 
home who have worshipped all your lives in a Pu- 
ritan " meeting-house" to walk up the nave of Santa 
Maria Maggiore with me (a church very near us), 
between its double row of most magnificent Ionic pil- 
lars, which once adorned a temple of Juno, and pass- 
ing by chapels and altars laden with vessels of sil- 

* These are but a few examples of the many masterpieces remain- 
ing in the churches for which they were originally designed — some 
have been removed — they either hung were they could be but imper- 
fectly seen, or they were exposed to premature decay from the damp- 
ness of their position. 



ROME. 219 

ver and gold, where candles are forever burning be- 
fore the pictures of saints and martyrdoms, sit down 
with me on the steps of the Borghese Chapel, the 
richest in the world ! It has cost millions, and it is 
but a side apartment of the church, a rich pendant 
to a chain. There is a beautiful pavement, the walls 
are incrusted with Oriental marbles, the ceiling is 
painted with frescoes^ there are columns of porphyry 
and lapis lazuli, rich carvings, pictures in mosaic, 
and splendid monuments ; not a square inch is left 
unembellished. And yet, dear C, I think your eye 
would turn from all this gorgeousness to the squalid, 
lean beggar kneeling on the step beside you. 

The Colosseum is now a church, and the Pan- 
theon, once a temple for all the gods, is now conse- 
crated to the one true God.* The statues of the di- 
vinities have disappeared from the Pantheon, and the 
niches they occupied are now filled with tawdrily- 
dressed altars and the pictures of saints. 

There is a little chapel of the Capuchins near 
the Piazza Barberini with pictures that you would 
like to see every day in the year. But of all the 



* If architecture is a species of writing, what must we thiuk of 
the disparity between the genius that produced the Pantheon and 
that which designed the facade of St. Peter's? The worship of the 
gods has long ago passed, and with some of us the worship of the 
saints, but there is one altar in the Pantheon at which we all offer 
our homage ; it is a simple tablet over the ashes of Raphael, whose 
life you feel in Rome more than that of thousands you see, and yet, 
as this tablet tells you, he died at the age of thirty-seven : what a 
glorious immortality he achieved in this brief period ! The veneration 
of the man who never heard the name of Raphael without touching 
his hat, does not seem exaggerated to one who has been to Rome. 



220 ROME. 

churches in Rome, and I assure you I have visited the 
most renowned of the three hundred and sixty-five, 
not one among them, I hesitate as I except St. Peter's, 
has given me more delightful sensations than Santa 
Maria degli Angeli. It is huilt after a design of 
Michael Angelo on the ruins of Diocletian's baths. 
The roof is supported by huge granite columns which 
stood in Diocletian's hall. It Js in the form of a 
Greek cross, and when you enter the harmony of its 
perfect proportions affects you as if a strain of music 
burst from the walls.* 

If you do not care for art, or if you are tired of 
pictures and statuary, you may visit the churches for 
their curiosities. Through one you go down into the 
Mamertine prisons, one of the few remaining works 
of the republic, where Catiline's conspirators were 
imprisoned, Jugurtha was starved to death, and St. 
Peter miraculously set free ; or you may dive into 
the subterranean church where Constantine held his 
councils, or see in old St. Clement's the model of all 
churches, or at St. Pietro in Vincolo the very chain 
with which St. Peter was bound. In short, my dear 
C, a thorough examination of the Roman churches 
would be quite work enough for one lifetime ; do 
not imagine that I flatter myself I have given you 
any notion of them in this brief and flippant notice.f 

* There is no exaggeration in this. I suppose that the ingenious the- 
orist who resolved music into mathematics could give a satisfactory 
explanation of my simple fact. 

f I am aware it requires an art which I do not possess to make 
this subject interesting, and therefore I have condensed pages into a 
few paragraphs. I walked these splendid edifices daily with the en- 



JOURNEY TO VALLETR I. 221 

Valletri, February 13. 

We have left Rome, my dear C, and left it, after 
a sojourn of but two months, with the fond feeling 
of lovers. Nowhere do you get such an attachment 
to material objects ; — the living are dead here, 
but the dead are living. I looked mournfully round 
for the last time on our sunny rooms, and out upon 
our pleasant garden, with its ripening oranges, ever- 
blooming roses, and singing birds. We have the 
pleasant sadness, too, of leaving friends at Rome.* 
N., our landlord, was unfeignedly sorry to part with 
us ; madame wept, and dear little Enrico could not 
speak " because the signore were going away !" 
I would find a better reason for my tears, as we 
drove on to the Appian Way, than the fear that we 
were looking for the last time upon the tortuous 
old walls of Rome, on the towers, domes, columns, 
and all the gray city surrounded with an atmosphere 
that the mind's eye fills with " millions of spirits." 

You cannot imagine, dear C, for we have nothing 
bearing the most distant resemblance to it, the sol- 

thusiasm, if not the devotion of a pilgrim. The limits of my book are 
drawing to a close, and I am obliged to omit our excursion to Tivoli 
and Frescati, which occupied the last days of our first visit to Rome. 
The memory of my delightful visit to Frescati, and the remains of 
Cicero's Tusculan Villa, his " eyes of Italy," blends with the better 
memory of the English friend to whose zealous kindness I owed this 
pleasure. 

* I should be ungrateful not to specify among these friends our 
consul, Mr. Greene, who so honourably represents his country at 
Rome. Though withheld, by assiduous devotion to literary pursuits, 
from general and useless attentions to his countrymen, his kindness, 
when needed, is prompt, unmeasured, and effective. 

T2 



222 JOURNEY TO VALLETRI. 

emn solitude of the drive across the Campagna from 
Rome to the Alban Hills, a distance of twelve miles. 
There are remains of tombs and broken lines of 
aqueducts (most beautiful ruins they make) on each 
side ; but scarcely an indication of the presence of 
man, scarcely the note of a bird or the sound of an 
animal to break the eloquent silence. Could this 
have been a solitary drive in Cicero's time ? he al- 
ludes to the danger of robbery in going from Rome 
to Albano in broad daylight. 

As we began the ascent of the Alban Mount the 
aspect of the country changed. The declivities of 
the hills are covered with ilexes and olives. Instead 
of going into the hotel, K., L., and myself took a 
guide, and went off a mile and a half through a 
gallerw, or imbowered walk, to the Alban Lake ; a 
crater lake, deep sunk within high surrounding hills, 
which K — n, with his usual aptness, compared to a 
teaspoonful of tea left in the bottom of a teacup. 
At the end of the galleria we came upon a village 
terminated by an ugly summer-palace of the pope. 
The peasants, whose dwellings are nested in the 
nooks and angles of an old fortress, were all in the 
street ; the old women, with their distaffs and spin- 
dles, walking and spinning, and looking as fit to 
spin an evil destiny as Michael Angelo's Fates, 
though, like the young girls, they w r ere dressed in 
short-gowns of a brilliant red, and head-gear of the 
same colour. Men and children were sitting in the 
doorways pursuing the pleasures of the chase — heads 
their hunting-ground ! Young children were teach- 



JOURNEY TO VALLETRI. 223 

ing younger ones in leading-strings to walk,* and 
there was the usual quota of blind, lame, and sick 
beggars. You will scarcely believe me, but it is 
true that, in a progress of a hundred miles through 
New-England villages, I have not seen so much 
beauty as I saw this morning. The peasants of Ti- 
voli, of Frescati, and of Albano are beautiful ; and I 
could scarcely turn my eye from these last to look 
to the Alban Mount towering up into the clouds, 
where our guide pointed out a monastery standing 
on the site of the temple of the Latian Jove. That 
has passed away; but the Via Triumphalis, by 
"which the Roman generals approached it for their 
ovations, and the Roman emperors for their sacrifi- 
ces, still exists. There are moments in this Old 
World, and this on the secluded Alban Lake was 
one of them, when the 

" Strong barriers round thy dark domain, 
Thou unrelenting Past !" 

disappear, and the long-gone generations rise be- 
fore you in all their pomp and sacred offices. 

But we were soon recalled to actual life by our 
cicerone, who, like all his countrymen in sunshine, 
with plenty of antichite to show, and a good fee in 
view, was in a high state of excitement. Fancy one 
of our common labourers striking his breast, casting 
up his eyes, and exclaiming, " Dio Mio — bella gior- 
nata — bellissima giornata, eccellenza ! ah ! da pia- 

* This mode of learning to walk, a nursery tale with us, is uni- 
versal in Italy. 



224 valletri. 

cere anche la vita !"* And then he poured out 
such compliments on the girls, calling them " Belle ! 
belle! belle assai !" for which pleasing improvisation 
K. insists he charged two pauls extra, and that the 
next lady he conducts will find herself perfectly an- 
gelic. 

In our way we passed the ruins of Domitian's 
villa and the place where was the Emissario, an 
outlet for the lake cut through the mountains in 
obedience to an oracle.f 

We found R. and E. sitting out on a terrace that 
overlooked a lovely garden. Here they had taken 
their lunch and remained for two hours. Is not this 
a blessed country for invalids 1 



Three miles from Albano we overtook our in- 
amorato, who had jogged ahead on a donkey, to 
have the privilege of escorting us to the Lake of 
Nemi, called by the ancients Speculum Diance. 

" Mirror of Dian ! aptly named by those 
Who dwelt near Nemi's wooded wave." 

We saw nothing but a solitary beggar, and some 
cows grazing where Diana had a temple and Egeria 
her favourite haunt, and where goddesses and 
nymphs might, indeed, love to dwell! I am now 
sitting at Velletri looking from a very pleasant win- 

* " My God— your excellency ! what a beautiful ! most beautiful 
day ! life alone is a pleasure !" 

f " This great work," Eustace says, " was done in the year of 
Rome 358, to prevent the sudden and mischievous swells of the 
lake, which had then recently occasioned considerable alarm." 



TORRE TREPONTI. 225 

dow at the sun as he drops his urn into the Mediter- 
ranean, which has appeared in the distance, for the 
last hour, like a sheet of molten gold. 



TORRE TREPONTI. 

After winding down the Alban Hills this morn- 
ing we soon came on to the Pontine marshes, for- 
merly so fatal and now pestilential during the hot 
months. They are twenty-four miles in length, and 
from six to twelve in breadth. The draining of them 
was carried on by the Caesars, by the popes, and by 
the Medici, and to its present state by Pius VI., who 
rebuilt the former Appian Way and made it what 
it now is, one of the best roads in Europe. 

This is supposed to be the place spoken of by St. 
Paul as Forum Appia, and this, say the authorities, 
was Horace's second resting-place on his journey 
to Brundusium. I trust they found the elements 
as kind as we do. Our carriage is drawn up on 
the turf while our horses are taking their meridi- 
an ; and as the inn is a secularized old convent, most 
uninviting, we prefer remaining out of doors. R. 
is taking his siesta in the carriage, E. is at her 
worsted-work, K. reading aloud the "Morals of a 
Soldier" from a book given her by a ci-devant Ital- 
ian militaire, and L. is hazing about with an ivy 
wreath on her bonnet, and the fresh flowers tucked 
on one side which our handsome cameriero put on 
our breakfast table as a signal of the primavera. 
The wide, green level land on each side of us is 



226 TERRACINA. 

broken only by canals and stagnant water, and cov- 
ered with herds of buffaloes and beeves, flocks of 
sheep and droves of horses ; a long, level horizon 
bounds the view on the Mediterranean side, and on 
the east, beyond the morass, are steep and rugged 
mountains. Tw t o or three miserable villages are vis- 
ible on their acclivities. At Sezza there stood once 
a temple to Saturn one hundred and thirty feet high. 
Before and behind, as far as we can see, stretches 
the road, completely imbowered and looking like a 
beautiful avenue. Beside the inn there is another 
dwelling for human beings, a thing made of sticks 
and straw. I walked past it and looked in; rag- 
ged wretches, blighted with want and malaria, were 
playing cards; like lean and sallow creatures are 
sauntering up and down before our carriage staring 
at us; gens d'armes are standing at the inn door, 
and two healthy-looking little boys are sitting on the 
step devouring a crust of bread — oh youth and na- 
ture, how potent are ye ! 



Terracina. — We are again on the seashore; the 
waves are breaking as softly under my window as 
the ripple of a lake. The fishing boats are drawn 
up on the shore, and the nets are drying. So a sea- 
shore might have appeared in the patriarchal stage 
of society; and here was an important town of the 
Volsci, an independent nation ! and here, on the 
very spot where the little boats seem sleeping in the 
moonlight, were once the ships of an important naval 



TERRACINA. 227 

station ! On the land-side of our inn is a most cu- 
rious pile of stone of Nature's masonry, and a little 
back from the summit are some regular stone arches, 
the remains of a palace of Theodoric or a temple of 
Hercules. We clambered up a street almost per- 
pendicular, to see the Cathedral built on the ruins of 
a temple of Apollo, but we were frightened by the 
ragged, ruffianly-looking wretches in the piazza ; 
and, without seeing the consecrated pillars, we came 
down again au galop* 

* We are happily so constituted that the minor miseries of life are 
forgotten as soon as past, and, therefore, never but at the moment, 
and by the susceptible traveller, can the misery inflicted by the fleas 
in Italy be estimated. Ours was at its acme at Terracina, where, 
during a wretched night, I never closed my eyes. We kept for some 
days a list of the killed; of fugitives, of course no account could be 
made. On one day they amounted to twenty-five; on the next to 
thirty ; and, finally, the amount ran up to a hundred, when we desist- 
ed! If it be remembered that even one of these most subtle little 
beasts of the field can make his victim perfectly wretched, it cannot be 
wondered at if sometimes, amid the softest airs of Italy, some of our 
party longed for the cold winds and killing frosts of their own coun- 
try. Lest a delicate reader should be shocked at the introduction 
of this topic into a lady's journal, I must be allowed to say that it is 
a very common one among the most refined of the suffering trav- 
ellers in Italy ; that I have heard it discussed for half an evening in 
a society of lords and ladies, where, on one side, lavender was rec- 
ommended as a sovereign antidote, and on the other it was main- 
tained that the essential oils only occasioned the little wretches to 
faint, or feign fainting ! " Fleas" make a distinct article in the guide- 
books, and fleas are the subject of the fine arts. In one of the gal- 
leries of Rome there is a picture of a pretty young woman with a 
basin of water, most intently engaged in finding victims for her 
noyade. 



228 MOLA DI GAETA. 

My dear C, 

Mola di Gaeta. — Would that I could surround you 
with the odorous, balmy atmosphere of this most de- 
licious place, and transport you to its orange-bow- 
ers ! but since that cannot be, pray, the next time you 
pass my bookcase, take down a certain yellow-cover- 
ed book, " Kenyon's Poems," and read the few last 
lines of " moonlight," and you will find the poet do- 
ing for you what I cannot. This morning, six miles 
on this side Terracina, at a huge gate between two 
stone towers, we passed from the Roman States into 
the Neapolitan territory. You have had something 
too much of this, or I would describe to you the mob 
of beggars that surrounded us at Fondi. We needed 
to have been " Principesse," as they called us, to 
have afforded relief to such numbers. Just in pro- 
portion as we advance south the poverty increases. 
Shoes are becoming a rare luxury, and, as Francois 
says, " he is accounted a rich man who wears them." 
In their place they wear leather soles fastened on 
with cords that are wound around their legs. The 
working people wear a cotton shirt and drawers ex- 
tending a little below the knee — the shirt is a win- 
ter garment. We have seen children to-day with 
nothing on but thin, short, ragged cotton drawers! 

A mile and a half before we reached Mola we 
passed the very spot where, as it is believed. Cicero 
was killed, and within a vineyard a few yards from 
the road is a cenotaph erected to his memory.* It is 

* It is better to look at these places, and, I think, even to hear of 



MOLA DI GAETA. 229 

three stories high and circular, and encloses a column 
of the height of the edifice. The stones and bricks 
are bare and mouldering. The marbles that incrust- 
ed them have given place to a mantling of ivy, 
roses, and laurustines, whose rich breath incenses 
the dearest name of all Roman antiquity. 

Our inn has the loveliest position I have seen in 
Italy. It is in the midst of a large garden, or, rath- 
er, of orange and lemon groves. For the first time 
in our lives we have seen to-day these tropical fruit- 
trees in perfection, as spreading (not as high) as an 
apple-tree and bending under the weight of their 
fruit. The gardens are in the recess of a crescent 
bay, and fill with their terraces the interval be- 
tween the last slopes of bare, rugged mountains 
and the sea. These slopes are covered with vines 
and olives, and through some openings in our or- 
ange-bowers we get glimpses of a narrow, gray vil- 
lage pent in between us and the hillside. Our inn 
and garden, formerly the villa of an Italian prince, 
are supposed to cover the site of Cicero's Formian 
Villa, and upon the strength of that supposition 
bears the attractive name of La Villa di Cicerone. 
We have been dow T n to the shore and seen the found- 
ations of edifices, and subterranean arches and col- 
umns, that indicate Roman magnificence. We wan- 
dered about till the twilight deepened upon us with 
nothing to remind us that we were not in Paradise 

them, without recurring to the doubts in which the uncertainty of 
tradition necessarily invests them. Let the antiquaries dispute and 
the learned doubt, we, the unlearned, will enjoy the pleasure of be- 
lieving. 

Vol. II.— U 



230 MOLA DI GAETA. 

till, on retracing our way to the inn, we heard a 
yell after us of " Signore ! signore ! Qualche cosa 
per il giardiniere !" (" Ladies ! ladies ! give some- 
thing to the gardener !") and, turning, we perceived a 
tall, swarthy fellow, in Neapolitan tmdress, pursuing 
us for his tax on the sweet air we had breathed. 

I have never enjoyed anything so perfect, of its 
kind, as the quiet Sunday we have been passing at 
Mola di Gaeta. We left it just at evening, and 
drove from our orange-bowers into the very narrow 
street of the village, so charming seen through our 
garden vistas. It being Sunday, the people were, of 
course, in their festa-dresses — such as had them — and 
they were like a swarm of bees in that narrow 
street ; standing, leaning, lying, sitting, it seemed 
next to impossible that our carriage should find a 
passage through them ; and such a mingled shout 
of begging and salutation assailed us, some hands 
stretched out for " carita, per 1'amor di Dio !" and 
others to give us the graceful Italian greeting. At 
the end of the street a troop of masqueraders gath- 
ered about us, playing their antics, to the infinite di- 
version-— of the boys and girls, I would have said; 
but all were merry as merriest childhood. 

My dear C, let us be thankful for the system of 
compensation that makes their delicious sunshine 
not only meat, drink, and clothing to these children 
of the South, but a fountain of ever-springing cheer- 
fulness ! 

The scene has changed. We are at St. Agata, 
at a dirty inn. Our philosopher, Francois, laughs at 



NAPLES. 231 

our fallen mercury, and says, " So it always is in life. 
You had the good at Mola, you must expect the bad 
at St. Agata !" Unworthy w T retches that we are ! 
The Padrone has just sent us up a letter from W., 
announcing that he and K — n have engaged de- 
lightful lodgings for us at Naples, where we hope to 
be to-morrow. 



Naples, February 17. 

My dear C, 

After a pleasant drive through a long stretch of 
vineyards and olive-orchards, we arrived at the gate 
of Naples at four o'clock P.M. W. (our good an- 
gel) met us at the Dogana, where we had the tor- 
ment of a long detention. 

We drove down the long street of the Toledo ; 
such swarming of human life I never saw, nor 
heard such clamour ; it was as if all the Bedlamites 
on earth had been let loose upon it. Broadway is 
a quiet solitude in comparison I* However, we for- 

* I extract from the journal of one of my companions a descrip- 
tion of the scene at the Dogana, too characteristic of Naples to be 
omitted. " We were stopped at the custom-house, and W. came 
running out to meet us. How delightful to be welcomed to this 
strange place ! Our carriage was instantly surrounded by beggars, 
who have increased in numbers and importunity at every step of 
our way since we entered the Neapolitan dominion. The sentinels, 
pointing their bayonets at them, gruffly cried, • Indietro !' (' Back!') 
Uncle R. and W. poked them with their canes, and a young officer 
who just then came up flourished his sword over their heads, and 
made them recede for a moment, but they closed round again in- 
stantly, like water that had been disturbed by a pebble. Such tatters 
I never saw. It was difficult to divine what kept them together. 



232 NAPLES. 

got its turmoil and every other vexation when we en- 
tered our spacious drawing-room at 28 St. Lucia, and 
sat down by the window to gaze upon the Bay of 
Naples, directly under us, without any apparent in- 
terposing object, for we overlook the street between 
us and the water. The crescent-like curve from us 
to the base of Vesuvius brings the mountain in front 
of us. The light smoke curling up from the crater 
caught the beams of the just risen full moon, while 
the mountain itself and Monte Somma were a dark 
mass of shadow. We sat watching the little white 
houses at Portici becoming distinct as one after an- 
other caught the moonbeams, and the tiny boats 
which, with their spread sails, shot across the path of 
quivering beams, and then again vanished in shadow. 
Yes, we sat as if spell-bound till we were roused by a 
familiar voice asking, " Is there anything better than 
this V 9 " Nothing," we replied with one voice ; but 
" deeds speak louder than words." We turned away 
from the most beautiful harmonies of nature to ex- 
change greetings with our dear friend K — n, to 
whose actual presence they were, after all, but " mere 
moonshine." 

We are rich at Naples : W. makes one of our 
family ; K — n is at the Crocella, almost within sha- 
king-hands' distance ; an English lady, our acquaint- 
ance, who is not one of those who "isolent leur 

There were maimed, halt, blind, and mutes ; some real, some feign- 
ed, and all as vexing as moschetoes in a walk in the woods in sum- 
mer." It may well be imagined what a hardening process we had 
gone through in our progress southward when a young person nei- 
ther selfish nor stony-hearted could thus describe such a spectacle. 



NAPLES. 233 

coeur en cultivant leur esprit/' has lodgings over us ; 
our Charge, Mr. Throop, is showering kindness on 
us ; and, finally, our consul, Mr. Haramett, a man of 
sterling qualities with twenty years' experience here, 
is bestowing upon us essential favours, the advantage 
of his society being that we esteem above all the 
rest. 

We met here letters of introduction obtained by 
C — i from exiles at Paris to distinguished Neapoli- 
tans. They are shy of us, and, as we are told, com- 
pelled to be so by the dastardly system of espionage 
and persecution maintained by the king. General 
Pepe, the commander of the Italian detachment of 
Napoleon's Russian army, has been several times to 
see us. His fine countenance has a most melan- 
choly expression ; no wonder ! he told me that of 
the two regiments he led into Russia, the finest fel- 
lows in the Neapolitan service, all, save thirty-four, 
perished in one night. He lives in perfect retire- 
ment, but it is said that in any emergency the king 
will be glad to employ him.* 



One of our daily pleasures is a walk in the Villa 
Reale, a public promenade-garden between the Chi- 
aia — the great street of Naples — and the bay. The 
garden is about a mile in length, well planted with 
trees and flowering shrubs, and abounding in fount- 

* This opinion was verified. Before we left Naples the alarm of 
a rupture with England occurred, and General Pepe was placed at 
the head of the army. 

U2 



234 NAPLES. 

ains — the very spirit and voice of this land of the 
South. The brightest flowers are the English chil- 
dren who take their daily recreation in the garden j 
beautiful scions they are of a noble stock. They show 
themselves exotics here with their fair skins, ruddy 
cheeks, blue eyes, and long flaxen curls. No car- 
riages or beggars are permitted within the garden. 
We now and then see a pretty costume diversifying 
the uniform fashion of the upper classes of all coun- 
tries; for instance, we saw to-day a Neapolitan 
nurse in a rich, dark blue skirt with a broad gold bor- 
der round the bottom, a bright scarlet jacket with 
gold bands round the wrist, and a gold comb in her 
hair, a sort of human paroquet. The garden is em- 
bellished with statues, casts of our friends in Rome, 
the Apollo, Antinous, and certain not strikingly mod- 
est groups, whose exposure in these public grounds 
shows a remarkable consistency in the king, who, in 
a fit of sudden, or, as K — n terms it, Turkish prudery, 
has put all the Venuses in his museum under lock and 
key. The unrivalled charm of the Villa Reale is the 
view of the bay. The very name of the " Bay of 
Naples" sets all your ideas of beauty in a ferment, 
and so let it ; they will create no image approaching 
in loveliness to the all-surpassing reality. Yet, in the 
very face of its blue waters and delicious atmosphere 
— of Capri, lying like a crouching lion at its mouth — 
of its other amethyst islands — of Vesuvius, with its 
fresh fringing of yesterday's snow — our countryman, 

Mr. , maintained to me that it was not to be 

compared to the Bay of New-York. "I have at one 



NAPLES. 233 

time," he said, "counted fifty merchant-ships there, 
and what is there here but fishing-smacks V Truly, 
what is there ? 



The Studii, or Royal Museum of Naples, has, af- 
ter the Vatican, the richest collection of statuary in 
the world. Unfortunately, the rooms are dark and 
noisy ; one of the thoroughfares of noisy Naples 
passing by it. It may be a mere fancy, but these 
serene statues, with their solemn associations, seem 
to me to require an atmosphere of tomb-like silence. 
Noise is discord, and a Neapolitan street is a con- 
gregation of discords. Herculaneum, Pompeii, Ca- 
pua, and all these surroundings, have yielded up 
their treasures to fill this museum. Among them is 
an Aristides, the finest statue in the w T orld — in Ca- 
nova's judgment. The figure is enveloped in a 
mantle. There is a conscious mental force, and a 
beautiful simplicity, in its quiet, erect attitude, and 
an expression of tranquil, intellectual dignity in 
the head and face, fitting the godlike character of 
" The Just." Strange as it may seem, there is a 
Venus in the collection (happily not locked up, pour 
/aire penitence), who appears to me to express as 
much moral strength as the Aristides. This is the 
" Venus VidrixP She stands with her head in- 
clining towards Cupid, with a gentle reproof in her 
air, and a purity in her expression, as if she were, 
indeed, o'er all the frailties of her sex victorious. 
One of the prettiest groups is " Cupid sporting with a 



236 NAPLES. 

dolphin." Cupid, with a most lovely laughing face 
and curly hair, has his round arms wreathed about 
the neck of a dolphin, whose tail coiling around his 
body, has thrust his legs into the air. There is in 
this group an expression of life and frolic inconceiv- 
able to one who has not seen in the antiques how 
art subdues matter, converting marble into the image 
of God's creations. If this exquisite whim of art, 
instead of being housed in a sunless room, stood, as 
it was designed to stand, in the midst of a fountain, 
in the odorous atmosphere of an orange grove, with 
lights and shadows playing over it, its effect would 
be magical. 

Not one of the masterpieces here, but a curiosity, 
certainly, is an Ephesian Diana, a most elaborate 
piece of workmanship. The head and hands are of 
black marble, highly finished, the body is enclosed, 
mummy-like, in an alabaster case, upon which is 
carved heads of animals and other ornaments. This 
image, as W. suggested, explains the opposition of 
the artificers of Ephesus to the faith which was to 
put an end to their profitable labour. We found 
ourselves, day after day, leaving halls filled with 
busts, statues, and groups, to stand before a mutila- 
ted thing — the mere, fragment of a statue. The 
arms are gone, and the lower part of the body, the 
back and top of the head are shaved off; nothing 
remains perfect but the face and neck. It is called 
a Psyche, and is truly the type of the soul. It is 
the perfection of spiritual beauty and grace. There 
is something in the hang of the head, and a touch 



NAPLES. 237 

of sadness in the expression, that reminded K. of 
the angel in Retzsch's game of chess ; but the face 
appeared to me far more powerful and compre- 
hensive. 

If I had to answer all the libels of the scoffers at 
my sex, or to defend the " rights of women," I 
would appeal to this Psyche, to Raphael's Sibyls, to 
Dante's Beatrice, and to Shakspeare's Portia, Isa- 
bella, and Desdemona, to show what the inspired 
teachers of the world have believed of our faculties 
and virtues. 

The bronzes in one apartment of the museum are 
said to be the finest in the world. They were anteri- 
or to sculpture in marble. Among them is a life-like 
bust of Seneca, with sharp features, sunken cheeks, 
straight, matted locks, and his neck eagerly stretched 
forward as if on the point of speaking ; and there 
are exquisite Mercuries, Fauns, and Amazons. One 
among a long suite of rooms is devoted to paintings, 
and one alone contains some of the best treasures of 
art ; a Magdalen by Guercino, which is only less pow- 
erful than Titian's, and less tender than Guido's. 
There is a masterpiece of Dominichino's : a boy 
four or five years old in a blue kirtle is standing 
with his hands folded in prayer. The " man of sin" is 
crouching at his feet ; and though the child does not 
see him, he betrays a consciousness of the presence of 
evil and a feeling of weakness and danger. Behind 
him stands a beautiful young angel in all the repose of 
security, pointing to a glory above, and interposing 
his shielding wing between the devil and the boy. 



238 NAPLES. 

The Carnival at Naples is inferior in gayety and 
excess to that of Rome ; but it is said to be only 
second to that. It is generally remarked that its in- 
terest is dying away from year to year. Those who 
think its amusements were only suited to an age 
when men could neither read nor write, impute this 
to the " march of mind," which does march, though 
much in snail fashion, even here. Others maintain 
that all thinking people feel so deeply the oppression 
and misery of their condition that they have little 
heart for amusements of any kind. Such as it is, 
and so much (or rather so little) as ladies could see 
of it we have seen, and childish sport enough you 
will think it. 

During the carnival the corso, which is a course 
of carriages through the Toledo, the main street of 
Naples, occurs twice every week. We joined in 
it to-day; Mr. T. took a portion of our party in 
his carriage, and the rest followed in our own. Mr. 
T.'s carriage was furnished with baskets of sugar- 
plums and bouquets of flowers, as his station here 
compels him to be, in some sort, a participator in the 
frolic. We soon entered the Toledo, and took a 
place in the line of coaches. The street was a 
dense mass of human beings, with just space enough 
for the ascending and descending lines of carriages, 
and the windows and balconies of the houses to the 
fifth and sixth stories were crowded. Guards on 
horseback, looking like equestrian statues, were sta- 
tioned at short intervals, and made conspicuous by 



NAPLES. 239 

the red flag which they held. The king and roy- 
al family were out. His majesty, with some twen- 
ty gentlemen, was in an ornamented car drawn by 
six horses. The king wore no badge of distinc- 
tion ; they were all dressed iji gay dominos and vel- 
vet caps with white plumes, and all wore masks. 
The ladies of the court were in a similar car, and 
dressed in a like fashion. Both cars were furnished 
with sacks containing bushels of sugarplums made 
of lime with a thin coating of sugar. These are 
scooped up and showered around. The great con- 
test is who shall throw most, and most dexterously. 
Bouquets of flowers are thrown about; our girls 
had their laps filled w T ith them. Of course an ac- 
quaintance, a quaint masker, or a pretty woman is 
the favourite aim. When the royal cars meet they 
stop, the carriages of both lines halt behind them, 
and a general guerre a mort ensues. You are not 
absolutely killed, but " kilt" grievously. The mis- 
siles are as large as very large gooseberries. The 
face is protected by a mask of wire. Our defence- 
less hands were sadly bruised ; mine are yet black 
and blue. Some carriages were protected by cloth 
curtains, but in general they merrily took as w T ell as 
gave. Showers fell from the balconies, and the poor 
wretches in the street scrambled for them. In by- 
gone times the royal cars dispensed veritable sugar- 
plums 3 but even this grace has ceased. The novelty 
amused us for two or three hours, but I think we 
should all rather play hunt the slipper at home than 
to go again to the corso.* 

* We were, however, a few days after involuntary partakers, or, 



240 NAPLES. 

The Carnival concludes with a masked ball at 
San Carlo, the largest theatre in Italy. It begins at 
12 o'clock on Sunday night. I was over-persuaded 
to go by our kind frienjl Mr. T., and K — n's sugges- 
tion that " it is best to see things, that you may sub- 
stitute an idea for a word." But as you, dear C, 
can have only the words, I shall make them as few 
as possible. The theatre was brilliantly lighted, and 
viewed from the depth of the stage was a splendid 
spectacle. The tallest grenadiers in the king's ser- 
vice were planted like beacons about the house. 
The royal family were in their box, and the king- 
came down and mingled with the crowd. He is a 
tall, stout, burley, yeoman-like looking man. I ob- 
served, as he stopped for a few moments near our 
box, that he excited little attention, and was as much 
jostled and pushed as his subjects. The dancing 
was confined to the harlequins, and was a mere 
romp. There were few maskers, and these few sup- 
ported no characters, and merely walked up and 
down, uttering commonplaces in feigned voices. 
There was an excessively pretty young woman in 
the box next to us who attracted general attention, 
and it was to join the starers at her that the king 

rather, victims of this sport. We had forgotten the carnival, and 
having spent the morning at the Studii, were walking home through 
the Toledo, when all at once we perceived the guards taking their sta- 
tions previous to the corso beginning. The balconies were rilling. 
We were the only ladies in the street, and, consequently, rather con- 
spicuous, and mercilessly were we pelted as we ran our gauntlet 
homeward. 



NAPLES. 241 

had stopped near us. She was the sister of a lady 
whose beauty had captivated a brother of the king. 
The lady's husband was assassinated a few days be- 
fore the carnival, and the royal lover went off the 
next day to Florence — -for his health ! 

Save the little excitement occasioned by our pret- 
ty neighbour's presence, and the impertinences ad- 
dressed to her by the maskers, the ball was a heavy 
affair. The carnival has had its day. Men can re- 
main children a great while, but not forever. 



Mr. Throop procured us invitations to the court- 
ball,* and last evening we went. The mere forms 
of society are much alike all over the civilized 
world. The ball (with rather more space to move 
in, for there were fifteen or twenty rooms of the pal- 
ace open) was conducted much like one of our balls. 
Nothing struck me about the Neapolitan women but 
the vacuity of their faces, and the abundance and 
brilliancy of their diamonds. The Italian princes 
retain their diamonds, as they do their pictures, when 
every other sign of wealth is gone. The queen, 
who looks like a quiet body, designed by nature to 
nurse babies and keep the house tidy, sat with the 
court-ladies at one end of the dancing-room, and 
rose once to make a progress through the apart- 
ments. The royal family supped by themselves. 

* This was not one of the balls of the Accidentia Reale, which are 
given weekly by a company of whom the king is one, and to which 
foreigners are liberally admitted upon the application of their repre- 
sentative. 

Vol. II.— X 



242 NAPLES. 

Several tables were spread for the guests. Besides 
the knickknacks of our evening entertainments there 
were fish, oysters, and game, and on each table an 
entire wild-boar, stuck with silver arrows.* The 
ladies gathered hungrily about the tables and ate 
like good trencher-women. 

We retired after supper to an adjoining room, and 
sat down in a most liberty-equality style near a co- 
terie of ladies, who put up their eye-glasses and stared 
at us, but without any other uncivil demonstration. 

We soon perceived they were the ladies of the 
court, and they no doubt forgave us on the flattering 
ground of our being North American savages. 



Nothing can exceed the fertility of the soil about 
Naples. The crops on the best ground are each 
season as follows : pears and apples, grapes, two 
harvests of Indian corn and one of wheat, and at 
the end of the season a crop of turnips or some 
other vegetable. But what avails it to the multitu- 
dinous swarms who go hungry every day ? A man 
who can get work earns only, by the hardest labour 
in summer, sixteen cents a day, and he pays a tax 
of three dollars for every bushel of salt he con- 
sumes.! He is forbidden to use the salt water that 

* Of course it was merely a stuffed boar's skin. A boar-hunt in 
the royal preserves near Naples is a favourite royal amusement, and 
is attended by ladies. On one bright morning, while we were there, 
the queen killed, with her own fair hand, seventeen boars— a femi- 
nine sylvan sport ! 

f The price of salt is very low, some few cents a bushel, 



napIDS. 243 

washes the shore. All articles of necessary con- 
sumption are inordinately taxed. There is a tax of 
25 per cent, on the income of real estate.* 

We hear much of the indolence of the lazzaroni 
of Naples ; they are idle, but Mr. Hammett, who is 
a sagacious observer, says they are not indolent; he 
has never known one of them to refuse work when 
offered to him, and they will work for the smallest 
sum. We complain of their extreme abjectness, of 
their invariably besetting us, after being paid the 
price agreed on, " for a little more." " Ah," he says, 
" they are so very poor." If the man had half a 
soul the " King of the Lazzaroni" would be most 
wretched ; but his people are only his to provide for 
his pleasures and feed his avarice. Avarice is his 
ruling passion.f During the cholera an impost of 
half a million of ducats was laid to alleviate the 
extreme distress of the poor. Fifty thousand only 
went to relieve their necessities, and the remainder 
to the king's coffers. 

Whenever the provinces require expenditures for 
repairs or improvements they raise money by laying 

* As if each potentate were not sufficiently ingenious in laying 
taxes, one plays into the hand of another. Meat is of course pro- 
scribed during lent, but his holiness grants a dispensation on the 
payment of three carlini to the king. 

t The alarm of a war with England occurred while we were at 
Naples. The English deserted the town immediately, and the peo- 
ple suffered much loss and the usual confusion and anxiety incident 
to such a report. It was afterward said the king got up the alarm 
that he might speculate in the stocks ! This might be truth or sat- 
ire, it does not matter much which. 



244 NAPLES. 

a tax : but the money so raised cannot be laid 
out till a certain officer of the government makes a 
report as to the appropriation. If three years pass 
without a report being made, the money escheats to 
the king. Repeatedly the tax has been laid, the 
money collected, and the report never made. The 
avarice of a private individual is a folly, in a king it 
is a crime.* 

We had heard a very pretty story of the king- 
braving the cholera, and remaining with his family 
at Naples that he might share the common danger 
and calm the panic. The truth is, that he remained 
at Casserta, a royal residence at a distance from the 
danger, and that once, when he drove into the city, 
and was passing through the Mercata, the despair- 
ing people gathered about him and threw their 
black bread into his carriage. He threw it out 
again, and bade them flock to the churches and pray 
God to pardon them for the crimes for which he had 
sent this scourge upon them ! Does it seem to you, 
dear C, that our world of free people and respon- 
sible governors can be the same in which this self- 
ish wretch lives, a king, and permitted to transmit 
his power to his like % 

He has been educated by priests, and is now in 

* The system of espionage is so much, more severe in the prov- 
inces than at Naples that the country gentlemen flock to the city 
for protection. We knew intimately one of these, a most amia- 
ble and accomplished young man, whose whole family had suf- 
fered political persecution. Some had lost their lives, some were 
maimed, and some had died of broken hearts. While we look with 
detestation on the vices of a government that thus afflicts its sub- 
jects, we must not forget the virtue that thus resists. 



NAPLES. 245 

the hands of the Jesuits. His tutor has published 
the course of instruction by which he trained his 
royal and docile pupil. The king is there set forth 
as the shepherd, and the people as his sheep, over 
whom he has absolute power to lead them whither 
he will, to give life or inflict death. 

As neither the people nor the soldiers have any 
attachment to the government, there might be some 
hope of a better future if it were not backed by the 
power of Austria. The disaffection of the soldiery 
is so notorious that even the king himself is aware 
of it. He had at one time a fancy to give the 
troops a new uniform. " Dress them as you will," 
said his father, " at their first opportunity they will 
run away from you I" 

There" is a deep and general depravation here, 
doubtless, but the spirit of manhood is not extinct. 
A few days since a Calabrian soldier was struck by 
his superior officer. He complained to his colonel, 
who treated the grievance as a bagatelle. The next 
day, on the parade, the soldier shot the officer, and 
then walked quietly away. He was, of course, seiz- 
ed, and the next morning executed. To the last he 
was unfaltering, and said coolly that he had only 
done what should have been done for him ! 

Neither is humanity extinct here ; and, as you re- 
joice in the knowledge of a good deed as a gem- 
fancier does in the discovery of an antique, or a pic- 
ture-buyer in the acquisition of a Raphael, I will 
tell you a story Mr. T. told us of a gentleman whose 
benevolent countenance he pointed out at the court 

X2 



246 NAPLES. 

ball. The person in question is the king's master of 
ceremonies, nobly born, for a lineal ancestor of his 
received a sword from Francis the First at the battle 
of Pavia. The descendant has done something better 
than giving or receiving swords. During the chol- 
era he took under his protection eighty recent or- 
phans. He built an asylum for them which cost 
thirty thousand dollars. He has ever since defrayed 
its expenses and superintended it daily. His in- 
come does not exceed nine thousand ducats per an- 
num !* 



March 10. — We went yesterday, my dear C, to 
Pompeii. K — n was with us, quoting poetry and 
talking poetic-prose; the accompaniment »of such 
society, on an occasion like this, is like having fine 

* 1 have adverted to the controversy with England which occur- 
red during our sojourn at Naples. The king fancied he could extri- 
cate himself from the difficulty by requiring his minister to falsify 
the word he had pledged to an English company. He refused to do 
this. The king threatened, he persisted, and was consequently de- 
prived of his office, and ordered to retire to a strong house in one of 
the provinces, infected with malaria. He was poor ; his daughters 
(his only children), in the deepest affliction, said they would throw 
themselves at the king's feet and entreat his pardon. " Then you 
will do it at the peril of my everlasting displeasure," said the father. 
" I have only done my duty ; shall I ask pardon for that ? No, my 
children. Leave me my integrity ; it is all that remains to me." A 
gen d'armes present told him he was indiscreet to say these things 
in his presence. He replied, " You will do me a favour if you repeat 
them to his majesty." 

I asked a Neapolitan friend if this affair were spoken of. " Yes," 
he said, " but each man looks before he speaks to see who is within 
hearing !" 



NAPLES. 247 

music to your dancing. We drove past fields in 
which there were masses of ashes and lava of last 
year's eruption. It appears now strange that Pom- 
peii should so long have remained buried. The sur- 
face of the ground yet unopened indicates what is 
beneath ; it resembles a burying-ground, except that 
the tumuli are higher and more irregular. You ig- 
norantly wonder that the people of the villages at 
the base of Vesuvius do not live in constant terror : 
experience has taught them better. The stream of 
lava rolls slowly, like honey on an inclined plain, 
and you may be near enough to touch it with a cane 
and retreat before it reaches you.* After a drive of 
twelve miles we reached Pompeii, and, alighting, en- 
tered the Strada dei Sepolcri, street of tombs. This 
fitting entrance brings you immediately into sympa- 
thy with the people who lived here ; for their dead, 
those they loved, wept, and honoured, are as near to 
you as the dead of yesterday ! This street of tombs 
was outside the gates of the city ;f the tombs are 
raised several feet above the general level, and 

* When there is an eruption the people go on with their usual oc- 
cupations till they see the stream coming their way ; then they pack 
up their valuables— a small burden — and trudge off to Naples. If 
their houses are buried, they return, when the lava cools, to build 
new ones, and cultivate a soil inexhaustibly fertile. 

t The Romans, except in the case of eminent individuals, forbade 
interments within the walls of their cities. The author of " Rome 
in the Nineteenth Century" justly remarks that the Roman custom 
of burying on either side of the highway explains the common inscrip- 
tion, " Siste Viator /" (" Stop, traveller !") so appropriate for them, 
and so absurd as used in village churchyards, where no traveller ever 
passes. 



248 NAPLES. 

crowned with monuments beautifully sculptured, and 
in some cases nearly entire. The interior of the 
wall surrounding the tomb is coarsely wrought in 
bas-relief. The streets are narrow and paved with 
large flat stones which bear the traces of wheels, but 
the pavement is unbroken and far better than that 
in the older parts of New-York. There are raised 
side-walks ; a luxury you do not find in the modern 
Italian cities. 

Now, my dear C, I feel it to be quite in vain to 
attempt to convey to you sensations indefinable, un- 
utterably strange, and yet thrilling us with a fresh 
and undreamed-of pleasure ; I know not why, un- 
less it be from a sort of triumph over time ; for here 
the past is, given back, and the dead are yielded up ! 
We passed thresholds Where the words " Salve" 
and " Jive " saluted us almost audibly. We ranged 
through rooms where people 1800 years ago went to 
bed at night and rose again in the morning; we 
sat down in porticoes where they once sat talking of 
what Caesar was doing in the provinces and Cicero 
saying in the Forum. We looked on the architectural 
designs and figures still in vivid colours on the walls, 
and fancied how the possessor of the Actseon torn by 
the dogs of Diana triumphed in having a picture 
more beautiful than any of her neighbours, and how 
•her rival might have exulted over her in the " Cupid 
and Dolphin sporting" on the now vacant pedestal 
■of to fountain. We entered the boudoir where 
the gold bracelet weighing a pound was discovered ; 
and as we looked at the two doves, wrought in its 



NAPLES. 249 

mosaic pavement, hovering over a jewel casket 
while one of them draws out a necklace, we fancied 
the happy artist showing his successful work to his 
employer. We saw the baby-heir of the house 
creeping over the marble floor to the masterpiece 
of all mosaics, while his nurse pointed out Alexan- 
der and his helmeted Greeks, and Darius and his 
turbaned Persians ! We fancied the errand-boy 
reading the name, still legible, of the oil-merchant, 
and turning in to purchase oil from the jars sunken 
in the counter, and yet perfect. We saw the jovial 
wine-drinker setting down his drinking-cup on the 
marble slab that still bears its mark. We sat down 
on a semicircular stone-bench on the side-walk, and 
heard the old man tell his gossips, how well he 
fought at Jerusalem under their good Titus, and the 
nurse promise the listening boy he should go up to 
Rome and see the wild beasts fight in the new Fla- 
vian amphitheatre. We imagined the luxurious 
Pompeian, after his bath, sitting on the bronze bench 
over a brazier in the still perfect bathing-room, and 
looking up with Roman pride at the effigies of the 
captive barbarian kings supporting the shelves on 
which stood the pots of precious ointments. We fan- 
cied the Pompeian Rogers dispensing the hospitality 
of "the house of the Faun," which, from the treasures 
found there, seems, like that of our host in London, 
to have been a museum of art and beauty ; and as we 
walked over its mosaic pavements made of precious 
marbles obtained from elder ruins, and passed walls 
built of the lava of previous eruptions, we heard the 



250 NAPLES. 

antiquary of Pompeii explaining former pioggie^* and 
the moralist prosing, as we were, on the mutations 
of human affairs ! We stood in the tragic theatre, 
and saw the audience stirred by allusions to locali- 
ties and celestial phenomena which no roof hid from 
them. We heard the cries of the workmen in the 
Forum when the eruption burst forth, and they let 
fall their tools, and left the walls but half rebuilt, 
and the columns but half restored that had been 
overthrown by an earthquake sixteen years before. 
We heard the sounds of labour in the narrow lanes, 
and, emerging into a broad street, imagined what 
must have been the sensations of those who filled it 
when, looking through its long vista, they saw the 
flames bursting from Vesuvius, and, turning back, 
beheld them glaring on the snow-capped mountains 
opposite. And, finally, my dear C. after going over 
the ruined temples of Isis and Hercules, we returned 
to our own actual life— all that was left of it unex- 
hausted — and, sitting down on the steps of the tem- 
ple of Venus, we ate buns, and drank our Capri, 
and sympathized with one of our friends, who feared 
he should outstay his Naples' dinner and his fa- 
vourite omelette souffle, and laughed at an unhap- 
py English pair whom we had repeatedly encoun* 
tered, the man swearing it was " all a d — d bore, 
these old rattle-trap places," and his consort, with 
Madame Starke open in her hands, learning where 
she was to give one, and where two notes of admi- 
ration ! 

* The Italians thus designate an eruption. 



NAPLES. 251 

My dear C, 
We went early this morning to the Studii, and, 
by way of an appropriate sequence to yesterday, we 
proceeded directly to the apartments containing the 
personal ornaments, domestic utensils, &c, of the 
Pompeians.* There are four rooms, containing more 
than four thousand vases and other vessels of terra- 
cotta. They are embellished with classical subjects, 
and their workmanship marks successive eras of art. 
The value set on them you may imagine from two 
among them being estimated at ten thousand ducats 
each ! In another apartment is a collection of pre- 
cious gems, sapphires, amethysts, carnelians, &c, 
cut into fine cameos. What think you of a cup (in 
which some Pompeian Cleopatra may have melted 
her pearls and swallowed them) as large round as 
the top of a pint bowl, made of alabaster, with a 
rim of sardonyx, having on one side a group in bas- 
relief of seven figures, representing, with wonderful 
expression, an apotheosis, and on the other an ex- 
quisite Medusa's head ! There are a great variety 
of personal ornaments, necklaces, bracelets, rings, 
pins, &c.j from which our fashionable jewelry of 
late years has been copied. We saw the necklace 
and bracelets that Diomed's wife wore for one thou- 
sand eight hundred years ! Yesterday we went into 
her wine-cellar, where she was found with her purse 

* With these are intremingled the treasures found in Hercula- 
neum. 



252 NAPLES. 

in her hand, and where the wine-jars are still stand- 
ing !* 

There is an immense quantity of bronze armour, 
some of it beautifully embossed, and so heavy that 
it would seem to require a giant's strength to sus- 
tain it. One helmet was found on a soldier who 
stood it out bravely at his post ; he was discovered 
at a gate of his city, still on guard, when the ashes 
were removed ! 

There is an endless variety of bronze lamps, some 
very beautiful, and small stoves ; one, that seemed 
to me a nice contrivance, had a fireplace in the mid- 
dle, pipes running round it, and cylinders at each 
corner. There is every article a housewife could 
desire to furnish her kitchen : kettles, saucepans, co- 
landers, tunnels, dippers, steelyards, with bronze 
busts for weights ! and, in short, dear C, there is 
everything to identify the wants, usages, and com- 
forts of the ancients with our own : surgical instru- 
ments, keys, garden tools. We observed a writing- 
case precisely in the fashion of a compact little af- 
fair K. is now using, and which she bought at a ba- 
zar in London. 

The drinking-cups are various and beautiful. 
There are seventy alike of silver, small and fluted, 
which were taken from a table outspread for a din- 
ner that was never eaten ; and perhaps it was for 
this very dinner that some meat which we saw in a 
stewpan was in preparation. 

* The poor lady is supposed to have sought refuge in the cellar. 
Very few skeletons have been found at Pompeii, from which it ap- 
pears that most of the inhabitants had time to escape. 



NAPLES. 253 

There are wheat, rice, oats, honey, figs, prunes, 
and almonds, all unchanged to the eye, except 
darkened in colour; and there is dough all ready 
for the oven, and a cake just taken out of it mark- 
ed into slices, and looking precisely like a " com- 
position-cake" prepared for one of our rural tea- 
tables — I did not taste it ! — and I saw a little cake 
made in the form of a ring, and set aside — per- 
haps — to cool for some pet child at school. Strange 
thoughts all these objects called up of human pro- 
jects and pursuits, and of human blindness. 



You will be pleased to know that your profession 
at Naples, though not sans reproche, as they, for the 
most part, notoriously take bribes, have a benevo- 
lent association for the gratuitous prosecution of the 
causes of the poor. This society meets every Sun- 
day morning, and go in a body to church to say 
their prayers. On every Thursday morning four of 
their number are in waiting to receive applications. 
Our friend L — a, who is one of them, says it does 
not amount to much, not from the fault of the law- 
yers, but from the reluctance of the clients, who 
have no confidence that the right can prevail with- 
out the customary accessory of bribes. A bribe to 
the judge is about as much a matter of course as a 
fee to the lawyer ! 

L — a took us yesterday to see the civil courts held 
in the Vicaria, a palace formerly occupied by the 
sovereigns of Naples. The lower story and subter- 

Vol. II.— Y 



254 NAPLES. 

ranean apartments are devoted to prisons, and are in 
a horrible condition. The upper story is another 
kind of prison ; there the archives of the state are 
kept, and among them precious historical records, 
jealously locked up. Foreigners are occasionally 
permitted a few hours' research among them, and a 
few favoured Neapolitans have been admitted for a 
very short time. 

In going up the wet stone staircase we passed a 
half-famished-looking woman sitting asleep with one 
child at her breast, in vain seeking food there, and 
another lean, pallid thing nestled close to her. 
Would not such a spectacle in the precincts of your 
courts have brought down a shower of alms ? these 
people clattered past them as regardless as if these 
human things were a part of the stone they sat upon. 
This is " custom." God has not given the Neapolitans 
hearts harder than ours up in Berkshire. We went 
through several crowded anterooms filled with law- 
yers, clients, and idlers, hawkers of stationary, and 
beggars. One long hall was lined on both sides 
with desks occupied by scriveners who, amid such 
clamour as I am sure you never heard, were going 
on as undisturbed as if they had been in your quiet 
office. We made our way through three rooms 
where courts were in session, and where the business 
was conducted quietly and decently, much, as it 
seemed to me, in form like the business of our legal 
tribunals, except in one particular. There is one of- 
ficer called the jyrocuratore, whose business it is to 
expound the law and apply its principles to the 



NAPLES. 255 

cause in question. Accustomed, as I have always 
been, to regard our judges as uncorrupted and incor- 
ruptible, I felt a sort of shuddering in looking at 
these men, whose vices are diseases of the heart that 
must carry disease and death into every part of the 
body of the state. There are four thousand lawyers 
in Naples, including clerks and scriveners, and it 
would seem that they, and all their dependants and 
followers, were within the walls of this old palace. 
These masses looked busy and intelligent, and much 
more respectable than the populace in the street 
— as if it had been sifted indeed, and this was the 
grain, that the chaff. The lawyers are marked by 
the government, as it is well known that they best 
understand the rights of the people. Authors are 
marked men too ; and with good reason, if they re- 
flect and feel as well as write.* 

* There is a young Neapolitan who obtained permission to print a 
history of the kingdom of Naples. He went on smoothly till he 
came to the seventh century, when the invasion of the Saracens 
gave rise to some patriotic expressions ; the publication was stopped 
and his MSS. seized. Nothing daunted, he began again ; and now, as 
fast as he completes a certain portion, he sends it out of the country 
to be printed. There is an institution here called UAlbergo de' Po- 
veri (Asylum for the Poor), which has large funds, but so fraudulently 
managed that the inmates are little benefited by them (the sum 
allotted to each person is thirty-nine ducats a year, and not more 
than the half of this is spent upon him). The young historian re- 
solved to expose these abuses, and he wrote a clever poem, in which 
he caricatured several persons concerned in them. This was printed 
here with a foreign superscription. He was seized and imprisoned. 
He confessed the authorship, but maintained there was no law for- 
bidding his writing what he would ; and as to the printing, the printer 
must answer for that. He was steadfast, and prevailed, but he is a 
marked man. One poor fellow, for a much lighter offence, was sent 



256 NAPLES. 

I am tempted here, my dear C, to copy a passage 

from 's journal which lies open before me, 

relating to a persecuted author, whose poems the 
girls have been reading with our Neapolitan friend 
L. It will at least serve to show you how ground- 
less were your fears that our young people, in the 
enchantment of these countries, would lose their sense 
of the advantages of their own. 

" L. considers Count Leopardi the finest poet 
since Alfieri, and certainly there is great power in 
some of the things we read ; and, oh ! it gives us 
such a feeling, such a ' realizing sense' of the men- 
tal suffering endured here by men who have one 
spark left of that love of freedom which seems to 
be God's universal gift, who have their eyes open to 
what is passing round them, and aspirations after 
better things. 

" And as we read with L. and see how excited 
he becomes, how, from the very innermost depths of 
his soul, he responds to the bitter invectives and keen 
sarcasms of the poet, we too kindle into a glow of 
indignation, and feel ourselves animated by the spir- 
it of uncompromising resistance \ and when we lay 
aside the book we thank Heaven, more than ever, 
that our lot is cast in a land where we can think, 
speak, and act as the spirit moveth us ; and Amer- 
ica rises before us in a halo of light, brightening 

to a madhouse, plunged into the bagno di sorpresa, chained, and con- 
fined with the "furiously mad." He excited such sympathy and * 
called forth such powerful intercession that he was finally released, 
and is now in Paris. 



NAPLES. 257 

and brightening. As Dante says on his first seeing 
Paradise, 

■ E disubito parve giofno a giomo 
Esse re agguinto come quei che puote, 
Avesse '1 ciel d'un altro sole adorno.' " 

For a quiet person, who does not care to run after 
sights, I can imagine nothing more delightful than 
to sit at the window as I do now, and look out on 
the bay and the golden clouds floating over Vesuvius 
and Somma, and at Vesuvius itself bathed in purple 
light. But the chief pleasure of a residence in Na- 
ples, after visiting the Studii, driving up the Strada 
JVuova — a superb terrace-road overlooking the bay 
— after walking through the royal pleasure-grounds 
at Capo di Monte, through the Boschi, a green Po- 
silipo with " verd'rous walls," and looking at the 
king's seven hundred peacocks dragging their green, 
their white, and their azure blue plumes over the 
green turf — and after ranging through the terra cot- 
ta, coral, and lava shops — the chief pleasure at Na- 
ples is from the excursions about its rich environs. 

The girls have ascended Vesuvius, and will give 
you their report. We have, of course, visited the 
tomb of Virgil, hardly to be called an excursion, for 
it is just at the end of the city, over the entrance to 
Posilipo. The fact of it being the tomb of Virgil is 
disputed. Eustace argues earnestly for the real 
presence; but Eustace is an easy believer. It is, 
however, a position the poet might have chosen if 
he looked fondly back to earth. It is in a vineyard, 
amid grotesque forms of tufa, which give a pictu- 

Y2 



258 NAPLES. 

resque effect to the ilex, ivy, and laurel that hang 
caressingly about the tomb, as if they had volunta- 
rily grown there. There are various openings af- 
fording glimpses of Vesuvius, of the glorious bay 
and its lovely shores. The tomb itself is an ordi- 
nary columbarium, with niches enough for all the 
Latin poets who have come down to us. 

We have just returned from Pozzuoli, the ancient 
Puteoli. After driving to the end of the gay Chi- 
aia, we entered the grotto of Posilipo, which is 
a tunnel cut through a tufa hill, and is 2316 
English feet in length, twenty -two in breadth, and, 
where loftiest, eighty-seven feet in height. It has a 
few dim lamps, whose insufficient light is inade- 
quately supplied by the few rays of outer day that 
penetrate the arched entrances at each extremity. 
The passage is wild and impressive. The impris- 
oned and heightened sound reverberating from the 
walls is like nothing earthly. The smiths who are 
working by fitful fires in a deep cavity at one en- 
trance, seem stationed at the threshold of Pluto's 
realm. An almost impalpable powder, from ground 
which no drop of rain ever touches, darkens and 
thickens the atmosphere ; a carriage drives past you 
with noise enough for a train of railroad cars ; then 
a Neapolitan car, with a little demon of a horse 
with only a patch of skin here and there, and no 
flesh, dashes along, its nine or ten wild, ragged 
passengers stuck on, chaffering, yelling, and laugh- 
ing, and all vanishing as soon as past, seeming mere 
shadows in a shadow land. Suddenly a bright 



NAPLES. 259 

gleam of lamplight illumines the figure of a bare- 
headed, gray old woman driving an ass with pan- 
niers, or falls on a strapping, bare-legged girl fol- 
lowing another loaded with piles of wood. They 
but appear, and vanish in darkness. There are 
shrines niched in the wall, where a lamp burns be- 
fore an image or a crucifix, and in the very heart of 
the passage is a chapel to the virgin scooped in the 
rock. I have seen this illuminated ; and when its 
lights are glaring on two or three kneeling worship- 
pers, and on a haggard beggar pointing to the im- 
age of the holy mother and stretching his hand to 
you, it produces a startling effect. 

It is remarkable that the date of this work is un- 
known. It is mentioned by Pliny and Strabo, and 
is supposed to have been done by the Cumaeans, to 
connect Neapolis with Puteoli. After emerging 
from the grotto this morning — and what a delicious 
transit it is to the open sky and earth ! — we turned 
off our road towards Agnano, a pretty, secluded 
crater-lake devoted to the king's aquatic birds. Such 
numbers were emerging from it that it seemed a 
fountain of life, and as if its waters were at every 
moment becoming incorporate in feathers and wings 
— poor things, they had a doomed look ! 

We left our carriage on the lake-shore to walk up 
a steep hill to Astroni, where we were admitted 
within a stone wall of four or five miles in circum- 
ference which encloses the king's preserves. It 
was here the queen did that delicate bit of lady-like 
work — killed her seventeen boars of a fine morning ! 






260 NAPLES. 

From the hill where we stood we looked down five 
or six hundred feet into what was once the crater of 
a volcano, and is now a spacious plain overgrown 
by trees and walled round by steep precipices. 
There is no tradition of the volcano, and no other 
record of it than that which the earth bears on her 
bosom. To an American eye these preserves sug- 
gest the idea of uncleared land, upon which the set- 
tler is beginning his work ; the sound of the wood- 
man's axe comes up musically from this deep soli- 
tude. L. and I wandered about the eminences 
among the superb ilexes, gathering the white heath, 
and catching glimpses of the bay, the queenly Nisi- 
da, and the great St. Angelo. 

We returned to the high road and proceeded along 
the margin of the Bay of Baia to Pozzuoli. This, 
once a great maritime town of Southern Italy, is now 
a miserable beggarly place, containing about 9000 
inhabitants, chiefly fishermen, and, as it would appear 
from the troops that besiege you, beggars, ciceroni, 
and venders of " antichi" as you are assured the 
little lamps and bronze images are which are thrust 
into your carriage by stout clamorous fellows, who 
meet you a mile out of the town and keep pace with 
your horses. Ah ! there is a horrid tariff on all out-of- 
door pleasures in Italy. Your compact made with 
your cicerone, your condition improves, the venders 
drop off in despair, and the beggars subside, it being 
a part of his duty to drive them off, which he often 
does amusingly enough, by reiterating the only Eng- 
lish word he knows, and which beggars and all soon 



NAPLES. 261 

learn in the good English society they keep : " d — n ! 
d— n ! d— n 1" 

If you can forget the living people at Pozzuoli, 
you may enjoy fine remains of the dead. There 
are columns of Tavertine of a temple of Jupiter 
Serapis thirty-five feet high. They bear a curious 
record of the passage of time and the work of the 
elements ; for six feet from the base they are entire 
and smooth, and thus far they have been buried in 
the sand ; above that they are nearly perforated, made 
to resemble a sponge, by pholas, creatures that live 
only in salt water, so that the sea has at one time 
advanced upon the temple, nearly covered it for 
ages, and again receded. It is surrounded by baths. 
The sick who came to bathe in the mineral water 
brought their propitiatory offerings to the god and to 
the priest. The ring to which the victims were at- 
tached is still riveted in the stone, the pavement 
below the altar is nearly perfect, and all around are 
strewn steps, capitals, and fragments of bas-reliefs. 

At a short distance from the temple we found 
workmen employed excavating an ampbHheatre, 
which will approach the Colosseum in extent, and is 
found in a good state of preservation. We went 
through an opened corridor where the masonry was 
as perfect as if it were done yesterday. 

But by far the most interesting sight at Pozzuoli 
is the Via Campana, a part of the ancient Via Appia 
leading hence to Gaeta. It is for two miles a street 
of tombs. The road (its pavement still in perfect 
preservation) is a deep cut between high rugged 



262 NAPLES. 

banks in which the tombs were imbedded, two and 
three tiers one above the other. Those that are 
opened are made in the form of the columbarium. 
There was an altar opposite the entrance, and 
around the sides a double row of niches (pigeon- 
holes) to contain the urns. Their ashes are now 
dispersed to the winds, and Nature, as if to veil the 
sanctuaries she had so long hidden in her bosom, 
has dropped over the opening a matted drapery of 
wild creeping plants. Nothing can well be ima- 
gined more solemn and more touching than the si- 
lence and solitude of this street of tombs. The 
throngs of the city that daily sent hither its funereal 
train are themselves a part of the mighty congrega- 
tion of the dead, and oblivion has effaced their rec- 
ords. 

" The wheel has come full circle." 



March 20. — This morning the sun rose clear for 
the first time in many days. Our own ungenial 
spring has followed us ; and, what with clouds with- 
out, and illness and pressing anxiety within, we have 
had some heavy hours. But this has been a day of 
compensations. 

We determined at breakfast on an excursion to 
Misenum, and on going down stairs to our carriage 
we met our friend K — n, who said he should pass 
the day at Astrone, but if " we had asked him he 
should have gone with us !" whereupon we eagerly 
offered him the best or the worst seat of the coach. 









NAPLES. 263 

He took that on the box, the " best or worst," ac- 
cording to one's fancy. As we drove round the 
Villa Reale, strapping men, who in our country 
would be wrestling with Nature and subduing it, 
besieged us, entreating us to buy little bunches of 
violets. K — n, who, I observe, seizes eagerly upon 
every pretext to evade the money-saving, modern 
non-giving doctrines, bought his hands full and 
threw into the carriage. 

The Chiaia had a true Neapolitan aspect. Equi- 
pages were in waiting at the doors of the English 
"appartemensmeubUs" for the luxurious strangers 
who were yet loitering over their ten o'clock break- 
fasts. English gentlemen were galloping up and 
down the trottoir. Every Neapolitan living thing 
had come out and was basking in the sun ; and for 
contrasts they were striking enough, dear C. Un- 
der the curtained windows of these English princes, 
and between their doors and their carriages, lay 
asleep, and sleeping away the sense of hunger, men 
in the heyday of life, one pillowed on the body of 
another ; closely packed in with them were women, 
in masses of rags and patches, looking heads — a 
regular branch of industry here* — and there were 
squads of stout ragged children pla}dng games, and 
knots of women and herds of sailors talking and 
gesticulating more vehemently than w 7 e should if a 
revolution were on the point of exploding. They 

* Some of my readers may be shocked by the grossness of such 
particulars ; but without them they could not get a just notion of the 
abject condition of this much-wronged people. 



264 NAPLES. 

are an outside people. The passions that lie deep 
in our souls, and that are only called forth by the 
voice of their master and to effect a purpose, are 
continually breaking out here. But theirs is but 
heat lightning ; ours rives the oak. 

At Pozzuoli we were, as usual, besieged by a lit- 
tle army of ciceroni. I had previously promised 
my patronage to a bright lad who had begged me 
to ask for Michael Angelo. I did so ; and a stout, 
ragged, ruffian-looking wretch started forth, ex- 
claiming, " Ecco ! ecco ! Sono Michael Angelo I" 
The ruse only brought down upon him the laugh of 
his comrades, and we drove off with a certain An- 
drea, a nice fellow, whom K — n, a fancier of human 
faces, had at once selected from his tribe. We turn- 
ed off near the ruins of the ancient mole (supposed 
to have been built by the Cumaeans, and repaired by 
the Roman emperors) to which Caligula attached 
his bridge of boats. Here we left our carriage at 
the Lucrine Lake, and went off by a footpath to the 
Lake of Avernus, the Tartarus which Virgil describes 
in the Sixth Book of the jEneid. It is like all the 
crater-lakes we have seen, deep sunk amid barren 
and precipitous hills. On the shore of this lake are 
the ruins of a temple which has been assigned to 
Pluto ; a pretty fair guess ; for who but an infernal 
deity should have his temple on Tartarus ? We 
turned from the lake to the grotto of the Cumaean 
Sibyl, the long-sought and honoured oracle to whom 
Dominichino has given such divine grace ; sacrifi- 
cing, as it seems to me, inspiration to youth, beauty, 



NAPLES. 265 

and harmony. We know not what art has done for 
us till we find it peopling these dreary solitudes with 
such exquisite forms. The grotto is a low, vaulted 
passage (a miniature of Posilipo), piercing the hil. 
and coming out on the other side. We discreetly 
declined groping through it, contenting ourselves 
with a bouquet of ivy-leaves and violets plucked 
about its entrance. 

We returned to the carriage, and drove round the 
Bay of Baia, a most secure shelter for shipping. It 
was here that Pompey, Crassus, and Pompeius dined 
on board a galley, when Pompey had not the cour- 
age to do the treacherous act he would have per- 
mitted his servant to do for him.* 

Here was the scene of Nero's parricide ; here 
lay the elder Pliny when the eruption that destroy- 
ed Pompeii burst forth j and here his nephew wrote 
that letter which has made us all as familiar with 
the circumstances that urged his uncle into the scene 
of danger, with the curiosity of the philosopher and 
the benevolence of the friend, as if both uncle and 
nephew were our contemporaries, and w T e had re- 
ceived the letter by yesterday's post ! We went up 
into the little village of Bauli, on the ruins of Lu- 
cullus' villa, where Tiberius expired, and where the 
people are now nested in little holes, crannies, and 
angles of old walls. We descended to the founda- 
tions of a celebrated reservoir, which the Romans 

* "Why," asked his freedman, "do you not cut the cables, and 
make yourself master of the world ?" " Why," he replied, " did you 
not do it for me without asking me ?" 

Vol. II.— Z • 



266 NAPLES. 

constructed to supply their fleet with fresh water 
when their fleet lay in the Bay of Baiee ; of which 
forty-eight piers are still entire, to show how this 
magnificent people could provide for an exigency ! 
"We went to the Mare Morto, a little inlet of the 
sea, the Stygian Lake of Virgil, and over his Elys- 
ian Fields, and wherever we went we turned a new 
leaf in the views of this land of loveliness. We 
stood on the sites and amid the ruins of temples, 
palaces, and villas ; for here they are, to borrow 
again Dewey's most descriptive expression, " knead- 
ed into the soil." 

As we paused on the shore near the ruins of two 
magnificent temples, I looked across to Pozzuoli,* 
and thought of the moment when St. Paul first set 
his foot on Roman ground there. Who could then 
have prophesied that the words of this tent-maker 
should be a law to the conscience, when men stand- 
ing where we stood should smile doubtfully at being 
told, " Here was Nero's palace, there was Cicero's 
villa, and there Lucullus' ; and there, on Nisida, 
lived Brutus with Portia, Cato's daughter, the ' well- 
reputed woman,' so fathered and so husbanded !" 
and should guess whether this ruin was a temple to 
Venus, or Hercules, or no temple at all ! or this other 
to Mercury and Diana ! Imagination should recon- 
struct these temples, rebuild these villas, repeople 
this Roman world, and refill it with its luxury and 
pomp, to estimate the faith of the brave apostle, 
who, in the midst of it all, " counted all things but 

* The ancient Puteoli. 



NAPLES. 267 

loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ 
Jesus our Lord !" 

But to return to ourselves, dear C. Our carriage 
was, as usual, followed by a train — not of loathsome 
beggars this time, but of young, Moorish-looking 
girls, who held up saucers with bits of precious 
marbles from the ruins, which, as they truly said, 
were " molto bello ! molto graziozo !"* Their lead- 
er, a joyous creature, addressed a sort of badinage 
flattery to me, telling me I too was " grazioza e bel- 
la !" and, when I shook my head, she shouted merrily, 
and said I should be " if I bought her marbles !" 
The train swelled as w T e proceeded, and among 
them was a young mute, who had her spindle and 
distaff, and spun as she walked. She seemed about 
seventeen, with a most graceful, fragile figure, and 
with a shade of prophetic sadness over features so 
beautiful that they reminded me of Raphael's saints. 

We had left our carriage and gone up through a 
defile to get a view of the queen's oyster-eating 
lodge ; and when we returned, our merry troop, 
clamouring and laughing, met us half way. Would 
that I could describe the scene to you, my dear C. ; 
but I can only give you the materials, and you must 
make out the picture for yourself. On one side were 
the ruins of temples, on the other the monstrous 
foundations of mouldering villas ; before us the bay, 
and Vesuvius with its blue wreath of smoke, and the 
Apennines brilliant in their caps of snow, and Capri 

* There are still striking memorials of the Saracen invasion of 
Southern Italy in the features and colouring of many of the people. 



268 NAPLES. 

far off in the bay, so soft and dreamy that it seemed 
melting away while we were gazing at it ; and 
clouds were driving over us, with fitful sunbeams 
glancing through them. Our merry followers were 
joined by an old woman, with a bright red handker- 
chief tied over her grisly locks. She was the living 
image of Raphael's Cumsean Sibyl, the same wrink- 
led brow, and channelled cheeks, and unquenched 
energy burning in her eye ; the resemblance was 
perfect, even to the two protruding teeth.* She was 
sitting on the fragment of a marble column, hold- 
ing above her head a tamborine, on which she was 
playing one of the wild airs to which they dance 
the tarantella, and accompanying it with her crack- 
ed voice. To this music the gleeful bare-legged girl 
I have described to you, having seized a strapping 
companion, was dancing a tarantella around K — n, 
who, though far enough from a Bacchus or Faun, 
has in his fine English face much of the joyousness 
of these genial and jovial worthies. My merry girl 
danced and shouted like a frantic Bacchante. I 
never saw a mouth so expressive of glee, nor an eye 
whose brightness was so near the wildness of insan- 
ity ; there were children with tangled locks of mot- 
ley brown and gold, and eyes like precious stones, 
leaping and clapping their hands, and joining in the 
old woman's chorus ; and my pretty mute was among 
them, with a chastened mirth and most eloquent si- 

* Such old women are not uncommon in Italy. I have seen 
half a score, at least, of living fac-similes of Michael Angelo's 
Parcse. 



NAPLES. 269 

lence. Apart stood four girls, as grave and fixed as 
Caryatides, with immense piles of brush on their 
heads, which they had just brought down from the 
hills; and we pilgrims from the cold North were 
looking on, 

K — n, who had begun by regarding our followers 
as troublesome sellers of " cose molte curiose" had 
by degrees given himself up to the spirit of the 
scene. The floodgates of poetry, and of sympathy 
with these wild children of the South, were opened ; 
and over his soul-lit face there was an indescribable 
shade of melancholy, as if by magic he were behold- 
ing the elder and classic time, and that were an ac- 
tual perception which before had been imperfectly 
transmitted by poetry, painting, and sculpture. He 
threw a shower of silver among the happy creatures, 
and we drove off. 

I have in vain tried to put this scene on paper for 
you. I have seen nothing in Italy so characteristic 
and enchanting ; and when K — n came to us in the 
evening, I found I had not exaggerated, nor even 
fully estimated his enjoyment. 



We have been with our English friends to Pac- 
tum ; and, though it rained torrents through one of 
our three days of absence, we had quite pleasure 
enough to repay us for crossing the ocean. What 
think you, then, of the scale in which these three 
days are but a make-w r eight 1 

Nothing was ever better suited than the approach 

Z2 



270 NAPLES. 

to Psestum over a wide, wild, and most desolate 
plain, with no living thing visible excepting, at far 
intervals, a shepherd, in the primeval dress of skins, 
tending a flock of gaunt, ragged sheep, a herd of 
buffaloes, looking, as K — n says, as if made of the 
refuse of all other animals, or a solitary ■wretch on 
an ass, w 7 ho appears, like the snail, to carry his house 
and household goods with him. The approach is 
suited to the ruins, my dear C, because there is no- 
thing to divert your attention for one moment from 
them. There they stand, between the mountains 
and the sea, in a wide blank page, scarcely ruins, 
but monuments of the art, wealth, and faith of a 
nation long effaced from the earth — temples erected 
to an unknowm God by an unknown people. 

I could condense pages of description and specu- 
lation from tourists more learned than I ; but, after 
all, they settle nothing ; we are still left to w T onder 
and conjecture, as the Emperor Augustus did when 
he came from Rome to Psestum, nearly 2000 years 
ago, to gaze as ignorantly (and as admiringly, I 
trust) as we now do. 

The cork models have given you an accurate idea 
of the form of these edifices ; but you must see them 
in this affecting solitude with God's temples, the 
mountains behind them, the sea sweeping before 
them, and the long grass waving from their crevices, 
to feel them — to class the sensations they produce 
with those excited by the most magnificent works of 
nature, Niagara and the Alps. 

We stood before them, we walked through them 



NAPLES. 271 

and around them, and then returned to the little 
Trattoria, the only shelter here, to comfort ourselves 
beside the blazing fagots with hot soup and mezzo 
caldo, and laugh at the eating and clattering parties 
— English, German, and Italian — who seemed pour- 
ing down with the rain upon Paestum, and whose 
■vehement demands our poor little host tried in vain to 
supply. Among them was an honest German, who 
seemed to have come for nothing but the " Paestum 
roses" which the elder poets celebrate, and which 
he expected to find as immortal as their poetry. 
We left him still tramping over the wet grass in 
fruitless search of them.* 



April 10. — To-morrow, my dear C, we leave 
Naples, and take the first homeward step as joyful 
as the Israelites when they turned towards the holy 
city. You may well have got the impression from 
my letters that the beggars are the only company 
we keep here, and, in truth, the beggars and the 
street denizens (here lazzaroni, at Rome facchini, 
and idlers everywhere) are the only inhabitants of 
the country of whom we have much knowledge. 
There are so few elements in their condition that 
* he who runs may read them." All, theoretically, 

* Aware that my book is outlasting the patience of my readers, I 
have omitted, excepting the few paragraphs above, my journal of our 
excursion to Paestum. My descriptions of the beauty of some por- 
tions of the route would give but an imperfect idea to those who have 
not seen it, and those who have need not to be reminded how much 
there is to be enjoyed. 



272 JOURNEY TO TERN I. 

acknowledge that they have " organs, dimensions, 
senses, affections, passions;" bodies with human 
wants, souls with an immortal destiny; and yet, 
while we tourists give volumes to ruins and pictures, 
the Lazzaroni are slurred over with a line or a 
sneer. We forget the wrongs which have brought 
them to their present abjectness and keep them in it, 
and quiet our sympathies by reiterating that "the 
Lazzaroni are the most cheerful people in the world !" 
and so they are (except, perhaps, our slaves !) far 
more cheerful, as a friend of ours says, " than they 
have any right to be;" happier than you and I, 
dear C, if happiness be indicated by a careless 
brow and merry shouts; but is not the happiness 
of a reflecting being shaded by seriousness, looking, 
as he must, before and after ? and is not the cheer- 
fulness of these people the most hopeless thing about 
them, proving, as it does, an unconsciousness that 
marks the lowest point of human degradation ? — no, 
not the lowest point — I would rather be one of the 
Lazzaroni than the king of the Lazzaroni. Is it not 
strange, dear C, that people should leave well-or- 
dered countries to come here to live ? There are 
many strangers, for the most part English, who, se- 
duced by the attractions of the climate and the love- 
liness of the adjacent country, remain here year 
after year. Life is rather too short, too full of im- 
port, to be consumed in mere passive enjoyment !* 

* My last walk in Naples was too characteristic of the place to be 
left untranscribed from my notes. I had hardly gone ten paces, 
when a decrepit old hag hobbled on her staff towards me, crying 



JOURNEY TO TERN I. 273 

Terni, April 24. 

We have left Rome,* my dear C, and with 
feelings too much like parting with a friend for- 
ever to say anything about them. We took good 
advice, and, instead of returning to Florence by the 
dreary way we came, we are on the Perugia route, 
which is filled with beauty, and is beginning to real- 
ize my early and most romantic dreams of Italian 
scenery. We scarcely know what spring is; our 
change of season is like the Russian bath, the 
plunge from the snowdrift to hot water. Here the 
muses and the graces seem to have taken the thing 

with her cracked voice, " Eccellen !" and I gave her a few grani from 
my side-pocket. Her feeble blessing me into " Paradiso" had scarce 
died upon my ear when I felt a hand thrust into this same pocket, 
and, turning, caught a youngster in the act of exploring it. I forgot 
that he was Italian, and I of another tongue ; I forgot, too, that I kept 
nothing in this pocket but halfpence for the beggars ; and, feeling 
as if I had been robbed of all I was worth in the world, I poured out 
my indignation in a volley of sound English, every word as good as a 
blow. The lad smiled at my impotent wrath, drew back a step, and 
pointed to a tall companion to indicate that he was the offender; and 
then stretching out his hand, said, in the true sotto voce tone, " Ah, 
eccelen ! date mi qualche cose." As I passed the Duke of Bor- 
deaux palace a poor woman was sitting on the pavement, leaning 
her head against the wall, with a ha'.f-famished child asleep in her 
arms ; she said nothing, but her look should have persuaded some- 
thing better than halfpence from my pocket ; it did not ; my heart 
was as hard as the Levite's ; and I walked rapidly on to escape three 
masses of dirty rags with human heads, hands, and feet that were 
coming towards me crying, " Excellen, per l'amor di Dio;" "Ex- 
cellen. moro di fam." The distance from my lodging to the shop 
was not one sixth of a mile. 

* We passed the Holy Week at Rome. My readers are already 
familiar with its splendid ceremonies, and as I cannot give fresh in« 
terest to them, I have discreetly omitted them. 



274 TERNI. 

into their own hands, and all nature is imbodied po- 
etry and grace. 

After winding around hills covered with home- 
looking houses, and peering down into the deep 
pathway which the Nar has made for itself through 
their ravines, w T e arrived here at twelve o'clock this 
morning, and have spent the afternoon in visiting the 
Falls. " If you have seen Niagara and Terni," said 
Francois, " you may die content." But Terni hardly 
deserves this companionship. The cascade, as per- 
haps you know, is artificial, the waters that over- 
spread the country above it having been drawn off 
by the Romans into the Velino, a small stream, and 
sent over the rocks into the Nar. It .does not owe 
its charm to the amount of water, but to its height, 
its most graceful form, and, above all, to its accessor 
ries ; to the varied slopes and cone-like mountains ; to 
the lovely view out into a gardened world, and — to 
its memories — Cicero came here from Rome to argue 
a cause about this very watercourse. We saw the 
fall at every point of view, from the summit to the 
base ; it was late in the afternoon, and we had the 
advantage of deep shadows below and bright lights 
above, and the iris playing over it, not like 

" Love watching madness with unalterable mien," 

but more like Love fondly hovering around beauty. 
In truth, Byron's w T hole description is an extrava- 
ganza ; his " infernal surge" is so soft and sprayey 
that you can scarce tell whether it move up or down ; 
it might be formed of the glittering wings of angels 






JOURNEY TO FOLIGNO. 275 

ascending and descending. Byron should have seen 
Niagara, and he could have described it. 

We came from the fall by a lovely winding 
footpath through tall chestnut-tress bursting into 
fresh verdure, and shrubs, and white feathery heath, 
and sweet violets, and cherry columbines, and through 
the orange-bowers of a certain Count Graziani. Ah ! 
my dear C, this is spring. And the girls who met 
us with asses whereon we were to ascend the hill to 
Papigno, were as beautiful as Raphael would have 
painted wood-nymphs. Terni owes a portion of its 
fame to this atmosphere of exceeding beauty. 



Foligno. — The day has been warm, and towards 
noon we crossed La Somma, a high peak of the 
Apennines. We had a yoke of oxen attached to 
our four horses, to drag us up this three mile ascent. 
K. and I walked the greater part of the way, and 
amused ourselves talking with the train of beggars 
that we accumulated, not " stropi and ciechi" (lame 
and blind), but stout dames and pretty children. 
The oxen pulled sturdily (the vetturino taking care 
to let them do all the work), till, when we were 
within a few yards of the summit, one of them sud- 
denly stopped and staggered. Their master detach- 
ed them, when the poor beast gave a convulsive 
leap and fell dead. His owner broke out into the 
most violent expressions of despair, beating his 
breast, clasping his hands, plucking off his hat, and 
throwing himself on the ground. Do not laugh at 



276 LA MAGI ORE. 

me, for truly he reminded me of Lear's anguish over 
the dead body of Cordelia. There could in no case 
be more demonstration of grief. Our beggarly ret- 
inue forgot themselves, and gathered round him, 
expressing their sympathy most vehemently ; while 
he continued touching gently the animal's horns, 
and crying out, " Gigio mio !" " O Dio mio !" 
" che faccio io !" drawing open one eyelid, and then 
the other, and exclaiming, " e morto ! e morto ! O 
Dio mio !" 

This was all unaffected. The oxen were proba- 
bly the only means of living the poor man possessed 
— his sole dependance for bread for himself and 
his family; but he show T ed all he felt; they are a 
demonstrative people. Do you remember a story 
Mr. Hoffman tells of one of our backwoodsmen, 
who, having left his wife and children alone in their 
log habitation to go into the forest, found them all, 
on coming back, lying murdered before his door, 
killed by Indians ? He made no movement, no 
gesticulation, but said quietly, " Well, now, if this 
is not too ridiculous !"* 



La Magiore. — After crawling to-day at a snail's 
pace up the immense hill on which the old Etruscan 
city, Perugia, stands, we were induced to retrace 
our way, by the report of the recent opening of a 

* It is possible that this man was neither a brute nor a clod, but 
that a year afterward he exhibited the signs of premature old age. 
Different races have different manifestations. 



LA MAGIORE. 277 

tomb in which some of the heroes of this brave old 
eyrie have slept for the last 2500 years. 

After descending the hill in a little post-carriage, 
and crossing a field, we descended a ladder, and a 
doubly-locked door being opened to us, we entered 
the tomb of a noble Etruscan family. Opposite our 
entrance hung suspended a bronze Divinity " in lit- 
tle." There are nine small vaulted chambers, built 
of square blocks of tufa, with a well-cut Medusa's 
head in the centre of each ceiling, and about it dol- 
phins and dragons, I think ; but our survey was so 
hasty that I do not vouch for its accuracy. One 
apartment only is left as it was found ; from the rest 
the monuments and ornaments have been removed. 
In this are several sarcophagi of travertine as white 
as marble, and as perfect in all respects as when 
they came from the sculptor's hands. There was a 
half-recumbent figure on each, supposed to be the 
effigy of the person whose remains were within the 
sarcophagus ; a curious portrait-gallery to be open- 
ed to exhibition after 2500 years, is it not 1 Every- 
thing is as fresh and uninjured as when the Etruscan 
mourners laid their dead here. Why, the tomb oi 
the Scipios is a 'parvenu to this ! 

We had only time for a strange, bewildering sen- 
sation, none to go into a palace hard by to examine 
some very precious bronzes found in the tomb, and 
removed there for safe keeping, and which we were 
told, as travellers usually are on like occasions, were 
better worth seeing than all the rest. 

We are this evening at an inn in a straggling vil- 

VOL. II.— A A 



278 LA MAG I ONE. 

lage half way up a steep hill, where, I fancy, no 
travelling-carriage ever stopped before. Any rooms, 
with an invalid, are better than none ; and our vet- 
turino threatened us with the probability of sleeping 
in our carriage if we proceeded to the regular stop- 
ping-place ; so here we are, in the midst of an Ital- 
ian rustic family, all serving us, all curious, clamor- 
ous, and good-humoured. Teacups have been bor- 
rowed from a luxurious neighbour ; a messenger was 
sent a mile and a half to bring milk for us, and our 
thoughtful vetturino provided butter at Perugia. So 
you see how extremes meet. An isolated Western 
settler, in a like exigency, would have had recourse 
to like expedients. But I wonder if ever, but in this 
land where grace and beauty are native to the soil, 
there was so pretty a rustic lass as is at this moment, 
with the help of two strapping dames, arranging our 
beds. I can scarce write for looking at her ; and, 
from that elective affinity which I believe we all 
feel, she returns my glance, and a smile into the 
bargain. She is not an Italian beauty ; there is no 
brilliancy of colouring ; but such perfect symmetry, 
and such a trustful, appealing, touching expression. 
She skims over the floor as a bird over the surface 
of the water ; I never saw motion so light and full 
of grace — it would make the fortune of an actress of 
pastoral-comedy. I must ask her name, and some- 
thing of her history. 

Her name is Clotilde Poggione ; and for her story 
she has none, she says. Her father is dead — every 
one's father dies sooner or later ; her mother is very 



lA MAGlONfi. 279 

poor, but neither is that any distinction here, and she 
earns her bread with these good people of the inn. 
" You have never been to America V " No," she 
replied with infinite simplicity, " nor to Perugia." 
" She would like to go to Perugia." said her friend, 
archly. " Ah ! you have a lover there, Clotilde," 
said I. " No, no ; I will be a nun." I looked at 
her gay-coloured woollen scarf becomingly drawn 
over her bosom and confined at her slender waist, 
and shook my head, and, taking hold of her string 
of corals, asked her if it were not a love-token ; she 
smiled and blushed, and her companion, laughing 
outright, said, " It is, it is ! and she has a love-letter 
in her pocket." Clotilde at first denied the charge, 
but a moment after she frankly gave it to me, laying 
her hand on my shoulder affectionately, and whisper- 
ing that I might read it if I would. " Yes," she 
answered to my inquiries, " he is handsome, and 
very good, but I shall never marry him; he is 
a professoi'e." She said all this with a sweet sim- 
plicity that reminded me of the poor maiden of 
Burns' lines to a daisy. She left the letter with me. 
It was written by an educated man, and had the due 
proportions of love and jealousy. I asked her friend, 
" Would the ' professor' marry her ? M '* Oh no ! 
Clotilde has no dowry, and his father will not let him 
take a wife without a dowry :" poor thing ! It 
needs no prophetic eye to foresee her destiny, and, 
living in a Catholic country, she will probably end 
the love-tale in a convent. 



280 JOURNEY TO FLORENCE. 

Clotilde hung about us last night, attracted by 
her sympathy with the young Forestiere, till I was 
obliged to send her away. I gave her a word of 
advice which I am sure, from her eager, grateful ex- 
pression, she means to follow. She was at my door 
again this morning at five o'clock with a bunch of 
sweet flowers. Here I have pressed one for a me- 
morial of her ; may it not outlast the innocence and 
loveliness of this " bonnie gem," Clotilde Poggione I* 



After leaving Magione we wound around the de- 
clivities of beautiful hills, and soon came in sight of 
Thrasymene, the very image of peace, as it lies 
deeply imbedded among these hills. Even our vet- 
turino felt that this was a sight worth seeing, and 
he voluntarily halted for us to alight. We walked 
down to the water's edge, and I recalled the days 
when, in our " noon-time," at the old school-house, 
I used to creep under my pine desk to read the story 
of Hannibal, and devoutly hope that he might al- 
ways be victorious. Do not all children sympathize 
with the boy who swore eternal hatred to the Ro- 
mans, and kept his oath so filially 1 I do still. I 
plucked some grass, and baptized it in the conse- 
crated lake. The road led us round the margin of 

* One of my young companions prophesied that this incident at 
Magione would furnish a story for some souvenir of 1842. It was a 
tempting bit of raw material for my humble craft, but I preferred pre- 
serving the unadorned fact to ingrafting upon it apocryphal additions 
for the sated appetites of souvenir readers. 



THRASYMENE. 281 

the lake to the little town of Passignano, which is 
on a promontory jutting into the lake, and where a 
mountain rises so precipitously as to make it an im- 
portant and dangerous military pass. This is the 
pass into which the " crafty" Hannibal is supposed 
to have decoyed Flaminius ; but why not the u stu- 
pid" Flaminius, to lead his men into a trap between a 
rugged mountain and an unfordable lake ? Because 
probably the Romans told the story. 

I have little interest in battle scenes ; but this, 
though two hundred and seventeen years before our 
Christian era, was vivid to me. The very form of 
the ground recalled the actual state of mind, the de- 
liberations and decisions of this most inexorable 
hater of Rome, who, to the pride of a military con- 
queror, added the keen pleasure of success in a per- 
sonal cause. Hannibal needed not much supersti- 
tion to have believed, when he looked from the sun- 
ny heights where he stood down upon the level plain 
where his enemy was enclosed in a fog, that his tu- 
telar divinity had spread the snare for them. This 
alluvial plain is now thick set with olives and grain. 
Yesterday we passed the bright city from which he 
turned aside, not daring to attempt it, and probably 
with a feeling preluding his final discomfiture. Peru- 
gia still sits queen-like on the throne Nature erected 
for her, but " who now so poor to do her reverence ?" 

We passed over the little rivulet Sanguinetto,* 

* The following graceful stanzas were written by a friend on this 
" bloody rivulet." I am not sure they are among his published po- 
etry, and therefore quote them without his name. 



282 JOURNEY TO FLORENCE. 

which, with the small town above it, took its name 
from the bloody work of this battle. We too have 
our " bloody brook ;" and so, I suppose, have all na- 
tions had since Cain first began the work of killing. 



We passed last night at Arezzo, a nice town — an 
epithet that in our sense, the old English sense, must 
be charily bestowed in Italy.* But everything ap- 
pears nice to us, in the strictest and in the most gen- 
erous sense of the word, since our return into Tus- 
cany. We were here before in the dreariest month 
of the year ; we had not yet seen the abounding, abject 
misery of Southern Italy, and certainly we were not 
struck with the flourishing condition of Tuscany; 
now it seems all thrift, abundance, and cheerfulness 
— a cheerfulness to be coveted and enjoyed. This 
is the glad season of the year, and this the gladdest 
of all lands, teeming, as it is, with the richest pro- 
ductions of nature, and now gay with blossoming 
trees and budding vines. The Tuscan mode of 
training the vine is very beautiful ; trees are plant- 

" We win where least we care to strive, 
And where the most we strive we miss. 
Old Hannibal, if now alive, 
Might sadly testify to this. 

" He missed the Rome for which he came, 
And what he never had in petto, 
Won for the little brook a name, 

The mournful name of Sanguinetto." 

* Our people are at first confounded by the modern English use 
of this word, by the " nice countenance," " nice ruin," &c. 



JOURNEY TO FLORENCE. 283 

ed from ten to fifteen feet apart, in rows or encir- 
cling a field. The limbs are cut off a few feet from 
the main stem, and so managed as to resemble the 
framework of a basket ; around this the vine is led, 
with a pendant from each limb. Sometimes they 
are festooned from tree to tree, and are often led in 
several parallel straight lines. The blending of 
grace with neatness and accuracy in the Tuscan 
cultivation, seems to me to indicate a rural popula- 
tion superior to any w T e have yet seen in Italy.* 

* Those of my readers who chance to be ignorant on the subject 
will thank me for translating for them a few extracts from M. Sis- 
mondi's accurate account of the Tuscan peasant, instead of giving 
them the superficial observations of my own very limited opportuni- 
ties. M. Sismondi, in his article " Sur le bonheur des Cultivateurs 
Toscains," endeavours to show that they are the happiest of all the 
people on earth who have only their own hands to depend on. The 
Metayer system prevails in Tuscany. The landlord furnishes the 
land, house, and implements of husbandry. The peasant cultivates 
the soil, and renders to the landlord half the product. " The Tuscan 
Metayer," says M. Sismondi, " receives from the hands of Nature 
his whole subsistence. He has little want of money, for he has 
scarcely any payment to make. He hardly knows the existence of 
taxes, as they are paid by the proprietor ; and as he has nothing to 
quarrel about with the government, he is in general attached to it; 
neither has he any interest to settle with the Church. Tithes having 
been long abolished, his contributions are voluntary." " In fine, the 
Metayer, in his relations with his proprietor, considers himself as a 
partner in a community of interests ; he has nothing to discuss with 
him. Usage has fixed his rights and obligations ; his contract may, 
it is true, be broken any year by his misconduct; experience has 
taught the proprietor that he loses and never gains by discarding a 
peasant, for none will give him more than half the product. Thus 
the Metayer lives upon the land as if it were his inheritance, loving 
it devotedly, labouring to improve it, trusting in the future— believ- 
ing that the fields he works upon will be cultivated by his children 
and grandchildren. And, in fact, they live on the same land from 
generation to generation. They understand it with a precision that 



284 JOURNEY TO FLORENCE. 

Had you, my dear C, passed this afternoon with 
us I should have but to write Florence, and 

" This brightest star of star-bright Italy" 

would rise before you 

" Amid her Tuscan fields and hills," 



the feeling of property alone can give." " The terraces, elevated 
one above the other, are often not more than four feet wide ; the in- 
dividual character of each is known to the Metayer ; this is dry, 
that is cold and damp ; here the soil is deep, there it is merely the in- 
crustation of a rock ; wheat thrives best here, barley there ; here it 
would be lost labour to plant Indian corn, even beans or pease ; a lit- 
tle farther flax flourishes wonderfully, and the border of this brook 
is capital for hemp. Thus you learn with surprise from the Me- 
tayer that, in a space of ten acres, the soil, the aspect, and ' the lay 
of the land' present to him a greater variety than a rich farmer 
knows to exist in his farm of five or six hundred acres." 

After enumerating some grievances in the existing laws which 
cause litigations, vexations, and disappointments among the proprie- 
tors, M. Sismondi says : " The gentleness and benevolence of the 
Tuscan character are often spoken of; but the cause -is not sufficient- 
ly remarked, which is, that all cause of quarrel is removed from the 
cultivators, Who constitute three quarters of the population." 

M. Sismondi, having an estate in Tuscany, and residing there a 
portion of his time, gives from actual observation and con amor e, a 
picture of the peasant's life as admirable for its exactness as it is at- 
tractive for its beauty. 

" When you leave the great roads and climb up the hills of the 
valley of Nievole, you meet at every step little paths, which, winding 
among the vines and olives, are never traced by a wheel, and are only 
passable for mountain horses with their loads. Along these paths, 
at every hundred steps, you find, upon some flowery hillside, a little 
house, which presents the sweet image of industry fully rewarded 
— of man's love Of the land — of abundance and peace. The house, 
built, substantially, with good walls, has always one story, often two, 
above the ground floor. Usually there are on the ground floor akitch- 
en, a stable for two horned cattle, and the store-room, which takes 
its name tinaia from the large vats in which the wine is fermented 
without putting it to press. It is here, also, that the Metayer locks 
up his casks, oil, and gram. He has ordinarily a shed leaning against 



JOURNEY TO FLORENCE. 285 

with the Arno winding through her loveliest of val- 
leys, and the Apennines in the background guard- 
ing her with its fortress-heights, and pouring oil and 

the house, where he can repair his utensils and prepare the proven- 
der for his animals, sheltered from the weather. On the first and 
second stories there are often two, three, and even four bedcham- 
bers. The windows are without glass ; they have only shutters ; 
but we must remember there is no ice in winter. The most spacious 
and airy of these rooms are devoted, during the months of May and 
June, to the growth of the silkworm. Large chests for clothes and 
linen, and some wooden chairs, are the principal furniture of the 
chambers. A bride always brings her nut-wood bureau. The beds 
have neither curtain nor valance ; but on each, besides a good straw 
bed, made of the elastic husk of the Indian corn, there are two mat- 
tresses of wool, or, with the very poorest, of tow, a good quilt, sheets 
of strong hempen cloth, and over the best bed a spread of raw silk, 
which is displayed on fete-days. There is no chimney except in the 
kitchen. There is always in one room a large wooden dining-table, 
with benches ; a kneading-trough, in which provisions are also kept ; 
a sufficient assortment of earthen jars, dishes, and plates ; one or 
two brass lamps, steelyards, and at least two copper vessels in which 
to fetch and keep water. 

"All the linen and working-dresses of the family are home-made. 
These dresses, the men's as well as the women's, are of a kind of 
stuff they call mezza lana (linsey-woolsey ?) if thick, mola if thin. 
The warp is a coarse thread of flax or tow ; the filling is of wool or 
cotton. It is dyed by the same women who weave it. One can 
hardly imagine the quantity of linen or mezza lana which the wom- 
en, by assiduous labour, accumulate : how many sheets are in the 
common depot, how many chemises, vests, pantaloons, skirts, and 
gowns. To give an idea of it, we add a part of an inventory of the 
family best known to us ; a family neither among the poorest nor rich- 
est, but living happily on the half of the product of less than ten 
acres of land. 

" Inventory of the bridal clothes {trousseau) of Jane, &c, &c. : 28 
chemises, 3 gowns of coloured silk, 4 gowns of coarse coloured silk, 
7 gowns of cotton cloth, 2 winter working gowns (mezza lana), 2 
summer working gowns and skirts, 3 white skirts, 5 calico aprons, 1 
black silk apron, 1 black merino apron, 9 coloured working aprons, 
4 white handkerchiefs, 8 coloured handkerchiefs, 2 worked veils and 
1 tulle veil, 3 towels, 14 pairs of stockings, 2 hats, one felt and one 



286 FLORENCE. 

wine into her storehouses from the sunny hills that 
slope down to her feet. But you have not seen it, 
dear C, and neither the word nor all the descriptive 
accompaniments I may tack to it will give you so 
much pleasure as to know we are thus far on our 
homeward track, and that we found our faithful 
friend, Mr. H., on the steps of the Hotel de York, 
where, though the town is full of strangers, he has 
secured agreeable apartments for us, from which we 
have a look-out on the Duomo, its Campanile, Bap- 
tistery, and gay piazza. 



Florence, as all the world knows, my dear C, is 
almost unrivalled in the beauty of its position and 
surroundings \ it is most curious as the best-preserved 
monument of the middle ages, but, apart from all 
this, it has interest to an American, a claim on the 
sympathy of the citizens of a free and working 
country, that belongs to no other part of Italy ; 
Florence derived the glory and power of its brilliant 
day from its industry and freedom ; not the freedom 
of a few lawless nobles, but the freedom of its 
working classes,* who, in 1260, formed themselves 

fine straw.— 2 gold cameos, 2 pairs gold earrings, 1 chaplet with two 
Roman piastres, 1 coral necklace with a gold cross." 

We should be proud to see our farmers' daughters with an outfit 
as substantial and suitable as this. 

* The Florentines began right. Villani, writing late in the thir- 
teenth century of their forefathers, after telling us that the finest of 
their granddames thought themselves dressed enough in a narrow 
gown of coarse scarlet cloth, &c, adds, " with all this external 
coarseness they had loyal minds ; they were faithful to one anothor 



FLORENCE. 2S7 

into twelve companies of " arts and trades" (the 
seven major arts having their consuls, captains, and 
ensigns), and got so completely the upper hand of 
the nobles that a title rendered a man illegible to 
office. 

There is a curious memorial of the exercise of 
popular power existing in the architecture of the 
city. More than 200 towers, which originally were 
the fortresses of the nobility, and which were, by an 
ordinance of the people, reduced from the height of 
180 feet to 80 feet, are now incorporated into other 
buildings,* and constitute a part of that massive 
architecture which makes Florence strike a stranger 
as " a city of nobles of individual force, where the 
power of the public was sometimes feeble, but where 
each man was master and lord in his own house." 
These towns were wretchedly lighted, and the nobles 
resorted to an expedient suited to their delicious 
climate. Near the towers they built Logge arcades, 
which served them for offices, market-places, and 
drawing-rooms. Some of them still remain. The 
unimpaired Loggia dei Lanzi is embellished with 
groups of statues in bronze, and, with its Greek 
arches and columns, is a beautiful specimen of archi- 
tecture. The Pitti Palace, the residence of the 

and to their country. In their poor and rustic lives they did the 
most virtuous deeds, and contributed far more to the honour of their 
families and their country than those who live more luxuriously." 

* " The material," says M. Sismondi, " which these private forti- 
fications furnished was employed for the common defence. A por- 
tion of the city-wall, and the palace of the Podesta, now a prison, 
were built with it." 



288 FLORENCE. 

grand-duke, and fit for an imperial palace, was 
built by a merchant, as were many of these immense 
structures, which may stand, for aught that I can see, 
as long as the solid foundations of nature. They are 
built of immense blocks of stone, without cement, 
and without architectural ornament; but to me their 
simplicity and strength are more effective than any 
decoration. They have a curious appendage, large 
iron or brass rings, in which they placed wax lights 
for illuminations, and to which they suspended the 
standards of the rival factions. They built com- 
pactly, to save the expense of an extended wall. 
The oldest streets are too narrow to allow a carriage 
to pass : across some of them you might grasp hands 
from palace to palace. I am sadly disappointed in 
the Arno. It embellishes the city, certainly, but it is 
turbid ; and, like all the Italian streams I have seen, 
with the exception of one or two rivulets, it appears 
as if it had been stirred up with French chalk. 



We have just returned from Santa Croce, and 
are overpowered with the heat. I do not wonder 
at the proverb that no one can die in Florence in 
the winter, and no one can live here in summer. 
But for Santa Croce : it is our third visit to the 
" centre of pilgrimage — the Mecca of Italy." So, 
indeed, may that sacred place be justly called where 
are the monuments of such prophets as Dante, Gali- 
leo, and Michael Angelo. The monuments are im- 
mense piles of marble; not one of them impress- 



FLORENCE. 289 

es me with its excellence as a work of art. But 
art would be but secondary here. After Westmin- 
ster Abbey — after the place hallowed by the great 
spirits of our own language, there is no monumental 
effect like that of Sante Croce. It is a sad thought 
that we have for the last time walked up and down 
its long line of columns, on the marble pavement 
trodden by generations long gone, before the monu- 
ments of Machiavel, Michael Angelo, Dante, Gali- 
leo, and Alfieri ! 

Santa Croce was begun in 1294, and is still un- 
finished, as are all the fa£ades of the Florence 
churches. This is to save the heavy tax imposed 
by the pope on the completion of a church ; and in 
part, probably, from the richness of the plan exceed- 
ing the ability for its execution. The Piazza of 
Santa Croce has historical associations that make it 
quite worthy of the church. " The richest Floren- 
tine citizens" (bourgeois), says M. Sismondi, " bav- 
in a- excited one another to arms, assembled in the 
Piazza of Santa Croce before a church ; and there, 
where now are the tombs of the great men of Flor- 
ence, the republic of the dead, was first formed the 
popular state of Florence." 

We went quite to the other extreme from this the- 
atre of popular associations, in going from Santa 
Croce to San Lorenzo, where are the splendid me- 
morials of the Medici, the final subverters of the 
liberty of Florence. The Cappella de' Principi was 
designed by Michael Angelo, and its embellishments 
in great part executed by him. There are on two 

Vol. IT.— B b 



290 FLORENCE. 

monuments figures in attitudes that it would be dif- 
ficult for a posture-master to maintain : they are 
called Day and Night, and Aurora and Twilight. 
Doctor Bell sees in the Aurora " a spring of thought," 
" an awakening principle ;" marble is a hard mate- 
rial for an allegorical refinement ! The celebrated 
statue of the Duke of Urbino, called Pensiero, from 
its wonderful expression of deep thought, is in this 
chapel. I cannot but think that this and other mas- 
terpieces of Michael Angelo throw a dazzling efful- 
gence over his inferior works ; and that in these 
statues on the Medician monuments and in his Mose 
he has half taken the step from the sublime to the ri- 
diculous ; but this is as dangerous as to talk democ- 
racy in an Austrian saloon ! 

The gorgeous, though yet unfinished, Capella di 
Medici is also at San Lorenzo. It is dedicated to 
the monuments of the grand-dukes of Tuscany, and 
all that can be done to glorify these mighty " acci- 
dents" by walls incrusted with the costliest marbles, 
and the most exquisite w r ork in pietra dura is done ; 
but what is it all, in effect, to the name of " Gali- 
leo" on his tomb, or the inscription on Dante's, 
" Onorate l'altissimo Poeta." 

We have seen Mr. Greenough's statue of Wash- 
ington. It is a seated colossal figure ; the arms and 
breast are bare ; one hand is extended in the act of 
resigning the sword, and the other raised, as if ap- 
pealing to Heaven. I have heard objections to the 
double action ; but why, since they are related, and 
produce a unity of impression ? The drapery, too, 



FLORENCE. 291 

is criticized, and will, no doubt, be condemned by- 
many of our people, who are intolerant of any de- 
gree of nudity. But what was Mr. Greenough to 
do 1 As he says, a French artist made a cast of 
Washington, while he was living, in military cos- 
tume, and nobody liked it. Canova put him into a 
Roman toga, and Chantry into a cloak, such as nei- 
ther Roman nor American ever wore. Nothing re- 
mained for him but to present him artistically, and 
certainly the drapery is arranged with expression 
and grace. The head is noble; expressing, almost 
to the point of sublimity, wisdom and firmness, with 
as near an approach to benignity as Washington's 
face will bear without a sacrifice of verisimilitude; 
good, not quite benignant. The subjects of the bas- 
relief embellishments are happily chosen. Aurora 
is on one side — a fitting type of our young country — 
and on the other is the infant Hercules strangling 
the serpent : a subject suggested, I presume, by Dr. 
Franklin's medal, and sarcastically indicating our 
struggle with the mother country. Mr. Greenough, 
even with his previous reputation, may be satisfied 
with this work, and our country proud of it. It is 
something to say for our progress in art that, in 
forty years from Washington's death, the best statue 
of him is by his own countryman. 



I have been walking about Florence with Mr. 
W., who naturally first showed me some memorials 
of his hero. Mr. W. was, as you know, a few years 



292 FLORENCE. 

since in our congress — what a change from the arena 
of Washington to ferreting out the life of Dante from 
the Tuscan archives! Mr. W. is among the few 
fortunate men who, from a false positition, has by his 
own wit found out, and by his own energy achieved, 
his true one. We went first to a tablet inserted in 
the pavement of the Piazza diDuomo, which informs 
you that there Dante was accustomed to sit ; and 
there he contemplated this church, which, before 
1300, as Mr. W. has discovered by a registered 
vote in favour of Arnolfo, its architect, was pro- 
nounced " the most beautiful edifice in Tuscany." 
When shall we have such inscriptions to mark the 
haunts of Washington and Franklin 1 Might not 
the memory of these men be made more operative 
by appeals through the senses to the active popular 
mind of our country 1 

We next visited the house Dante lived in before 
his banishment, and then proceeded to Beatrice's (she 
had a local habitation) in a street parallel to that in 
which Dante lived, and so near to his that her lover 
might have signalized her in the seaman's sense. 

We went, too, to Michael Angelo's house, where 
a suite of apartments are preserved as he left them 
by the present possessor, one of the house of Buon- 
arotti. We were rather surprised to find what snug 
and comfortable apartments were enjoyed by the art- 
ist, who has so associated himself in our minds with 
the vast and extravagant. There are a few charac- 
teristic sketches of his on the walls, shadowings of 
great thoughts; some humble relics, such as his 



FLORENCE. 293 

slippers, and, what pleased me more than all, a ro- 
sary, and shrine with its crucifix, before which he 
may have received the inspiration he infused into 
his works. 

We finished the morning in the gardens of the 
Pitti Palace. Magnificent they are in extent, vari- 
ety of surface, and embellishment. The entrance is 
free to all. They are not more lovely now, except- 
ing that the country which you see from them has 
the fresh aspect of spring, than they were when we 
were here on the first of December. The fountains 
were then playing in a warm atmosphere ; the stat- 
ues looked perfectly comfortable out of doors ; and 
there were such walls of laurel and laurestinus in 
blossom, with a variety of other evergreens, that it 
seemed as if a charmed circle were drawn around 
it, which " winter and rough weather" could not 
pass. The sun was then an enjoyment, and the 
shade to-day a positive one, and there we sat a long 
time listening to Mr. W.'s romantic stories of the 
stormy days of Florence, and to his tribute to the 
character of the reigning duke, Leopold, of whom 
we were very willing to believe all good while we 
were luxuriating in his grounds. He is one of the 
few sovereigns who have the enjoyments of sov- 
ereignty without its penalties. His territory is so 
small that he is not of sufficient consequence to be 
molested or to be dictated to by his royal brothers ; 
so he gets on very quietly, is kind and indulgent to 
his people, and hospitable to strangers, even though 
branded as liberals. It is not long since he received 



294 FLORENCE. 

a letter (written at the suggestion of Russia) from 
his brother of Austria, containing a list of Poles 
who had sought refuge in Florence, whence Leo- 
pold was advised to expel them. You are aware 
that advice means command in the Austrian vocabu- 
lary. The list was headed " dangerous men." Le- 
opold received it in council. He cast his eye over 
it ; put his own name at the head of these danger- 
ous men, and returned it without any farther notice 
to his minister ! Very nice, was it not, for a man 
who has Austrian blood in his veins 1* 



We drove yesterday to the great silk manufactory 
at the Villa Donato, where steam is introduced for 
many of the processes ; but there is nothing going 
on at present but weaving, which is done in the old- 
fashioned loom. The girls were particularly en- 
chanted with four iron Doric columns supporting a 
steam-engine, looking, as they said, like an Italian 
temple. The Italian atmosphere seemed to them to 
have subdued the principal antagonist to all poetry. 
The Villa Donato is a beautiful one, and its present 
appropriation reminds you forcibly of the time when 
the merchants of Florence were its princes. 

* The grand-duke's liberality attracts strangers to Florence, and 
it is natural they should linger there in the midst of a happy and 
beautiful people, surrounded by a country that is a paradise, and ad- 
mitted, without fees or vexations of any sort, to the daily enjoyment 
of its magnificent drives, gardens, and galleries. i 



FLORENCE. 295 

We have been to Fiesoli, the old Etruscan city to 
which Florence was once but a suburb. It was built, 
like all the Etruscan cities, on an immense height, 
about as conveniently placed as a city would be half 
way up Saddle Mountain. Those of us who could 
walk, walked up the steepest ascent, and R. and E. 
were drawn by oxen in a sort of sledge of the most 
inartificial kind. When they rather revolted at this 
mode of climbling, they were soothed with the as- 
surance that the grand-duke himself had no better. 
We pedestrians stopped at a farm-house, where we 
were charmed with rural thrift, cheerfulness, and 
kindness. The womankind were all engaged, from 
old age to childhood, either in weaving, spinning, 
knitting, or braiding straw. There was no misery 
— no begging. K. gave an old woman, who fetch- 
ed her a glass of water with eager kindness, a half 
paul, at which the old crone pressed K.'s hand in 
both hers, and said earnestly, " Dio vi lo rimerite." 
The glass of water was the boon that deserved the 
" God reward ye !" 

On the almost inaccessible summit we found a 
church, a seminary, and a monastery, but no remains 
of the Roman FaBsulae, excepting some columns of an 
ancient temple, and a grand bit of Cyclopean wall, 
made of massive stones seven or eight feet in length, 
laid together without cement. What a comment on 
the history of man, in his social relations and liabil- 
ities, this little fragment of a wall ! 

But the thing to go to Fiesoli for is the view of 



296 FLORENCE. 

Florence ; truly a queen of beauty in the lap of hills 
covered to their summits with vines, and olives, and 
lovely villas. Such a scene of abundance, grace, 
and beauty, of nature and art in loving harmony, I 
never beheld. No wonder the device of Florence 
was a rose in a field of lilies. 

We leave Florence to-morrow, my dear C, and I 
have said nothing to you of what now is Florence ; 
its unrivalled galleries of pictures ; that of the Palaz- 
zo Vecchio, The Gallery, and that of the Pitti Pal- 
ace, which is confessedly the finest single collection 
in the world ! It is in itself a world ; and when I 
am there looking at those glorious pictures that re- 
main in unfading beauty while generation after gen- 
eration comes hither to see them, I feel fully what 
was so well said by the old man who for seventy 
years had shown a famous picture in the Escurial : 
(i We are the shadows, they are the realities !" 

I do not now w T onder at the love of art which as- 
tonished me on first coming to the Old World. 
With us it is comparatively nothing ; in Europe it 
makes up the occupation of the idle portion of the 
world; and so much does the appetite grow by 
what it feeds on, that I begin to feel the danger (the 
existence of which I have but just learned) of forget^ 
ting the actual in the painted world. But do not be 
alarmed, my dear C. ; though the eyes of some of 
us were half blended with tears as we looked at our 
favourite pictures for the last time to-day, we cannot 
yet say with the dying Medici, before whom his 
priest was setting the joy of the heavenly mansions, 



FLORENCE. 297 

" Caro amico son contento col Palazzo Pitti" (" My 
dear friend. I am perfectly content with the Pitti 
Palace !)" No ; we shall once more to-morrow set 
our faces joyfully towards our earthly heaven — your 
and our home. 



Our route from Florence to Genoa was a scene of enchantment; 
and, finally, when we embarked at Genoa and left the Italian shore, 
we felt much as I fancy Adam and Eve did when the gates of Para- 
dise were closed upon them. 

We passed through the southern provinces of France to Switzer- 
land, a country as full of excitement, in a different way, as Italy — 
perhaps the only country that one can pass into from Italy without 
ennui. My book is already too long to break new ground, and I fin- 
ish it with the earnest wish that my readers may have the happiness 
of seeing for themselves scenes which I have feebly presented. 



THE END. 



"* 71 6^ 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proce: 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: |yjgy 2000 

PreservationTechnoiogie 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATH 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724) 779-2111 







■Hi! 



mm 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




003 471 166 5 



